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Tracing and Sketching 


LESSONS IN GEOGRAPHY 


BY 


S. Y. GILLAN 


* 



IES RECEIVED 


MILWAUKEE 

S. Y. GILLAN & COMPANY 
1897 


V > 


31210 




Copyright, 1897, by 
S. Y. GILLAN. 







Prets of Standard Printing Co., 
118-124 Michigan St., Milwaukee, Wis. 





INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 


This is not a text-book, neither is it an outline of the body of 
knowledge to be taught in geography, nor a treatise on methodology. 

Some years ago the writer prepared an outline of a course in 
geography for common schools for publication in the Manual for Wis¬ 
consin public schools. In exemplifying and elucidating before normal 
school classes and teachers’ institutes the plan of work therein set 
forth and called the Tracing and Sketching Method, these lessons 
were developed. During the past four years they were published as a 
series in The Western Teacher, and the demand for them soon ex¬ 
hausted the supply of back numbers containing the lessons, and 
indicated that many teachers of geography found them helpful. 

In revising the lessons for publication in this form, substantially 
the same plan of arrangement and presentation is retained which 
was followed in the articles in The Teacher. In some places logical 
order and systematic completeness are purposely ignored in order to 
get the nearer to the teacher in the presentation of matter and 
method. Suggestions as to pedagogical theory and teaching practice 
are thrown in at such points as seem most likely to make them help¬ 
ful to the teacher. 

It should be kept in mind that these lessons are intended to be 
used in connection with the second or advanced text-book of any 
series. The author believes that it is not too much to expect that the 
pupil who takes the common school course in geography should 
know the facts here presented. The difficult question for the teacher 
to decide is what to teach and what to omit in the great mass of 




material presented in the text-book, much of which is useful for refer¬ 
ence only. These lessons attempt to answer that question. For 
anv particular class not strong enough to master all that is here 
presented, in the thorough manner insisted upon, it maybe shortened 
by omitting the less important facts and places ; but whatever is de¬ 
cided upon as the body of knowledge to be taught, the teacher should 
faithfully adhere to the four rules given on page 10. 

Why do the lessons begin with Europe ? The reason will be made 
plain to the teacher who follows the series. But those who prefer 
can begin at any other point. Why North America and Europe 
receive so much greater attention than the other continents is a 
question of pedagogic perspective involved in the larger question, 
what knowledge is of most worth ? ' 


€ 


0 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS IN GEOGRAPHY. 

EUROPE. 

I. 

SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC BASIN. 

Let the pupils in the advanced class in common 
school geography open their books at the best map they 
can find of Northern Europe, and note the places in¬ 
dicated on the sketch map on the next page. 

This all at one lesson ? No; enough is given in 
this map and list for more than a month’s work, with 
the brightest class you ever had. The first seven places 
will be enough for the first lesson; for they are to be 
learned so well that the names can be recited from 
memory in either direction, or beginning at any pointy 
with no map or sketch in sight. Each pupil should be 
able to make at the board or with pencil a good sketch 
of the coast line, locating all the places learned. Send 
some to the board each day to draw sketches, while 
others recite orally, each being ready to go on from 
where the one reciting may be stopped. 

The first lesson may end with the Naze, the second 
with Tornea River, the third with Lake Onega, the 
fourth with Lubec. Review and drill for two or three 
days or as long as may be necessary to master the 
map work thus far, and to impress on the class the 
fact that everything yon assign must be learned. Now 


6 


TRACING AND SKETCHING J.ESSONS 


assign the rest at one lesson, review and drill, and 
practice making the sketch. You should master this 
also, so that you may be able to check errors in the 
sketches which the children make, or note the slips in 
their oral work without any book or map in sight. If 
you do this faithfully you will be the less likely to over- 



SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC BASIN. 


7 


burden the children with too long lessons; besides, in 
this way you will soon feel so much stronger in your geo¬ 
graphic knowledge that you will not regret the time 
and effort. 


1 . 

North Cape. 

26. 

Lake Ladoga. 

2. 

Hammerfest. 

27. 

Svir River. 

3. 

Loffoden Islands. 

28. 

Lake Onega. 

4. 

Maelstrom. 

29. 

Gulf of Riga. 

5. 

Trondhjem Fiord and City. 

30. 

City of Riga. 

6. 

Bergen. 

31. 

Duna River. 

7. 

The Naze. 

32. 

Valdai Hills. 

8. 

Skagger Rack. 

33. 

Gulf of Dantzic. 

9. 

Christiania. 

34. 

Vistula River. 

10. 

Glommen River. 

35. 

Dantzic. 

11. 

Cattegat. 

36. 

Warsaw. 

12. 

Gotha River. 

37. 

Carpathian Mountains. 

13. 

Gottenburg. 

39. 

Oder River. 

14. 

Lake Wener. 

40. 

Stettin. 

15. 

Island of Sealand and 

41. 

Breslau. 


Copenhagen. 

42. 

Lubec. 

16. 

Baltic Sea. 

43. 

North Sea., 

17. 

Lake Malar. 

44. 

Elbe River. 

18. 

Stockholm. 

45. 

Hamburg. 

19. 

Upsal. 

46. 

Havel River and Berlin. 

20. 

Gulf of Bothnia. 

47. 

Leipsic. 

21. 

Tornea River. 

48. 

Prague. 

22. 

Finland. 

49. 

Weser River. 

23. 

Gulf of Finland. 

50. 

Bremen. 

24. 

Kronstadt. 

51. 

Zuvder Zee. 

25. 

Neva River and St. Petersburg. 

52. 

Amsterdam. 


“But this is mere mechanical routine, w r ork w r ith 
dots, lines and words— lifeless forms ” Yes, so it is. 
Adam was a lifeless form, too, until the breath of life 
was breathed into him. 

“The study of geography should give mental pic¬ 
tures of the earth as the home of man—concepts of 
realities, not of their mere symbols. Europe is not a 
mesh of dots and lines.” Yes, yes, Mr. Enthusiast and 
Miss Normalite, we catch your idea and have no objec¬ 
tion to it if only you will put a bridle on it so it won’t 
run away with you. Remember your “ mental pictures ” 


8 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


must not be in the clouds; they must have something 
more of terrestrial locus and anchorage than fairy stories 
or they will serve no higher purpose. Which shall the 
child learn first, how the Laplanders live or where they 
live ? What the Maelstrom is or where it is ? It is the 
problem of boring the tunnel through the sand-hill— 
shall we make the hole or build the encasement first ? 

In the next lesson are given some interesting facts 
about the places noted in this map and list. Have 
your pupils master the map work here presented ; when 
they get the pictures they will then know where to 
locate them. 


II. 

SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC— Continued. 

Are the pupils able to produce at the board or in 
pencil sketch the map forms as given on page two ? Can 
they recite the rivers, cities, etc., forward or backward 
from memory in the order in which a traveler would 
reach them in sailing around the coast and up the 
rivers ? Can they name anything shown in this map 
when pointed out at random by the teacher, and can 
they point quickly to places named by the teacher? 
Until they can do this they are not ready to go on. 

If any teacher should find the work as outlined in the 
sketch maps too heavy for a particular class, it can 
easily be shortened by omitting the places of less im¬ 
portance. If the list of 52 places in Scandinavia, west¬ 
ern Russia and eastern Germany needs to be pruned on 
this account, the following may be omitted: Nos. 4, 5, 


SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC BASIN. 


9 


7, 10, 12, 14, 19, 21, 24, 27, 28, 48. This will reduce 
the work by about one-fourth. But it is believed 
that pupils in the sixth or seventh grades will easily do 
Europe as fully as the work is presented in these lessons 
without any pruning. 

Thus far, the work has been map forms and names 
only; but as the method presupposes a fair notion of 
what map forms represent and of what geographic 
terms mean, they will in some degree “represent reali¬ 
ties ”• without conscious effort on the part of the 
teacher to keep the thing and not the sign before the 
child’s mind. But no harm will result should the pupil 
see only the forms, the dots and lines, for days and even 
weeks at a time while mastering the map; and the in¬ 
genious teacher can arouse enthusiastic interest in the 
map itself. Let them see that Scandinavia and north¬ 
western Russia are shaped like a big dog, his tail in the 
White Sea, his nose in the North Sea, his front feet in 
the Baltic, and the Gulf of Bothnia under his belly; 
Bergen is the dog’s eye, the Naze his nose, and Christiania 
the bell under his throat; Trondhjem is just back of his 
ears, and the Loffoden Islands are a swarm of flies 
about to alight on his back. Or, to be more prosaic, 
let them note that the peninsula has two southern 
lobes, the Swedish extending much farther south than 
the Norwegian; that the mountains are much nearer 
the west shore than the east, hence a difference in the 
current of the rivers in Sweden and Norway; that the 
direction of the coast changes at Trondhjem; that 
Bergen, Christiania, Stockholm and St. Petersburg are 
nearly in the same latitude; that Denmark, Jutland, 


10 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


juts in between the two lobes; that a chain of lakes 
extends from the Gulf of Finland to the White Sea, etc. 

[There are some facts noted in the latter part of 
this lesson; this parenthesis is merely pedagogical. The 
teacher who follows the tracing and sketching method 
should faithfully observe the following rules: 

1. Carefully determine beforehand, each day, what work you will 
assign. 

2. Assign only those places about which, you know something be¬ 
sides their location. 

3. Require only such places and facts to be learned as seem to you 
so important that the pupils should know them ‘‘not for school, but 
for life. ” 

4. Cultivate independence of the text-book so that you can assign 
lessons and conduct recitations without consulting it. 

The observance of the foregoing rules, especially the 
second and fourth, may cause the daily lessons to be 
short; but that is one purpose for which the rules are 
given. Why should we ask a child to learn “ for keeps ” 
a fact which the teacher cannot state without referring 
to a book ?] 

The study of the descriptive text and the supple¬ 
mentary work which pupils and teacher will be able to 
contribute from their reading will probably bring out 
the following facts: 

North Cape is the most northern point of Europe. 
Read Longfellow’s “ Discoverer of the North Cape.” 

Hammerfest is the most northern city in the world. 
(The existence of some little stations or villages in 
Greenland farther north, does not vitiate this state¬ 
ment.) 

Maelstrom , a great whirlpool, has become a syn¬ 
onym for dangerous, evil influences; it is not so dangerous 
as formerly supposed. 


SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC BASIN. 


11 


Trondbjem , on the largest Norwegian fiord; old 
capital. The kings of Norway are crowned here. 

Bergen , a modern business city, a great fish mar¬ 
ket. 

North Sea and Skagger Rack are rough and billowy. 

The Naze, or Lindennaze, the “ Lime Nose,” a great 
mass of limestone, forms the southern promontory of 
Norway. 

Christiania , the capital and metropolis of Nor¬ 
way. 

Glommen, the largest river of Norway. 

Scandinavian Mountains , the backbone or water¬ 
shed of the peninsula. 

Gottenburg, the most important commercial center 
of southern Sweden. 

Stockholm , “The Venice of the North,” built partly 
on islands, a beautiful and substantial city, the most 
important on the peninsula. 

Lake Malar contains about 1,400 islands, and is 
one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. 

Upsal, the seat of the national university, one of 
, the greatest centers of learning in Europe. 

Tornea t a boundary river. 

Finland, fen land, marsh land, swamp land. See 
the great number of lakes. 

Kronstadt , on an island; a strong naval station, 
the “key” to 

St. Petersburg, one of the greatest cities of the 
world, built originally in a swamp. A gay capital in 
winter. Why ? 

Ladoga , the largest body of fresh water in Europe. 


12 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Valdai Hills, the watershed of the great Russian 
plain, but only a thousand feet high. 

Warsaw, the capital of old Poland. 

Stettin has a famous anchor foundry where the 
anchors for the German navy are made. 

Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen are free cities, or 
“Hanse towns.” Read in the cyclopedia about the 
Hanseatic League. * 

The Skaw is a dangerous point near which many 
vessels are wrecked every year. 

In treating important cities like Copenhagen or 
Berlin use pictures and descriptions to impress the dis¬ 
tinctive features of the cities. 

Magdeburg gives name to the Magdeburg cups or 
hemispheres. What are they, and why so called ? 

The Hartz Mountains are noted as the scene of 
many ghost, witch and fairy stories in German folk-lore. 

Leipsic is the most noted center of the book manu¬ 
facturing industry in the world. 

Prague, the capital of Bohemia. Note that Bohemia 
is almost surrounded by mountains. Looking at the 
map it seems that the Elbe flows up overthe mountains 
on the north of Bohemia. When the pupils notice this, 0 
give them a lesson on water gaps, what they are, how 
they appear and how they originated. 

Bremen and Hamburg are the great German ports 
for foreign commerce. From New York we can take an 
ocean steamer direct to either of these cities. Teach the 
fact that only a few ports in each country have foreign 
commerce. 

* cyclopedia is very serviceable for use in the geography class; several go< d 
ones t re now on the market at moderate cost. 


GENERAL FACTS OF INTEREST. 


13 


Amsterdam , the old capital of Holland, famous for 
diamond cutting. 

The Hague means the hedge, from an old fortifica¬ 
tion in the form of a ditch, a bank of earth and a hedge 
growing upon it. It is the capital of Holland. 

Now that the foundation is laid, the mental pictures will have a 
local habitation. By means of vivid description of scenes in the 
most interesting regions the constructive imagination maybe trained 
to “ see” the glaciers; the jagged coast; the storm-tossed waves on 
the shore; the pine forests; the muddy mouths of the Vistula and Oder; 
the rugged Carpathians; the King’s castle in Stockholm where he 
resides nine months, and in Christiania where he must stay three 
months each year; the processes of dressing, curing, packing and 
shipping fish at Bergen, etc. But the temptation here is to over-do 
the illumination of this kind and leave a confused jumble in the pupils’ 
mind. Definite map work, thoroughly learned and frequently re¬ 
viewed furnishes a solid anchorage for the “ pictures.” 

III. 

GENERAL FACTS OF INTEREST. 

The west shore of Norway is high and rocky, and 
abounds in fish; in some places the fish are so numer¬ 
ous that a pound weight of lead on a plumb-line will 
not sink through them.* 

On the cliffs along the coast, sea fowl, chiefly gulls, 
are so numerous as to give the appearance of snow- 
covered hills. The people of northern Norway shoot 
them, bury their bodies, feathers and all, in the earth 
and in the winter feed them to the cows. (In cold 
climates the cow is not altogether herbivorous.) 

At Hammerfest from Nov. 18 to Jan. 22 the sun 
does not rise; from May 14 to July 29 it does not set.f 
What is meant by the midnight sun? The fiords are 

•This fish story is given on the authority of the Rev. J. M. Buckley, author of 
“The Tzar. The Nihilist, and The Land of The Midnight Sun.” 
fSee Gillan’s Lessons in Mathematical Geography, page 62. 


14- 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


not so salty as the ocean. Why? Which has the 
higher level, Lake Ladoga or Lake Malar; Lake We- 
ner or Trondhjem Fiord ? Why ? 

A slight subsidence would make an arm of the 
ocean extending from the White Sea to the Gulf of Fin¬ 
land. The land in the northern part of the Gulf of 
Bothnia is slowly rising at the rate of three feet per 
century. Therefore, what natural division was the 
Scandinavian peninsula formerly ? 

THE BASIN OF THE BALTIC. 

Put a pencil on the map at the southern point of 
Sweden, and without removing it from the paper or 
drawing across any river or natural body of water, 
bring it around into Denmark. You have outlined the 
basin of the Baltic. The traveler who should make the 
journey thus indicated would see no mountains after 
leaving Norway and Sweden until reaching the Car¬ 
pathian mountains on the south. One of the note¬ 
worthy features of this basin is that it has a very low 
rim or watershed through so large a part of its extent. 

This area comprises one-fifth of Europe, and includes 
200 rivers. Upon it there falls a larger amount of snow 
than upon any other equal area of the inhabited world. 
In summer the rainfall is also very great, and the climate 
being cool, the evaporation is relatively small. Conse¬ 
quently a great quantity of water is poured into the 
Baltic. Much mud is washed down by the many rivers, 
and the river mouths are constantly pushing out farther 
into the sea by the filling up process. 

The Baltic is a shallow sea. Observe the narrow 


GENERAL FACTS OF INTEREST. 


15 


and crooked outlet to the ocean through three straits 
or “belts.” Baltic comes from a word meaning belt. 

It has been ascertained by measurements that the 
bottom of the Baltic, especially in the northern part, is 
gradually rising; hence it is getting shallower from two 
causes. 

A glance at the map will show that the country east 
of the Baltic contains many lakes; one of them, Lake 
Ladoga, is the largest body of fresh water in Europe. 
It is not difficult to see that if the land were slightly 
lower in this region, an arm of the ocean would extend 
from the White Sea south westward to the Gulf of Finland, 
as it formerly did when the land was lower than it is 
now. The ancestors of the seals now found in the Bal¬ 
tic probably entered through the White Sea. 

In all ages the Baltic has been famous for the pro¬ 
duction of amber, which is found chiefly along its south¬ 
ern shore. Amber is a fossilized gum, large pieces of 
which are washed up on the shore after storms. A few 
pieces weighing from ten to thirteen pounds have been 
found, one piece now in the museum at Berlin weighs 
eighteen pounds. The general introduction of Chris¬ 
tianity would lower the market price of amber. The 
devout Mussulman burning amber at the shrine of Ma¬ 
homet makes a market for the product of the Baltic 
mines. 

THE NORTH SEA COMPARED WITH THE BALTIC. 

Unlike the Baltic, the North Sea or German Ocean is 
deep and turbulent. While there are no tides in the Bal¬ 
tic, there are high tides in the North Sea. A study of 
the map will show how this can be. The water of the 


16 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


North Sea is as salty as that of the ocean, but the water 
of the Baltic contains a much smaller percentage of 
saline matter. Why? At what season will the water of 
the Baltic be freshest ? Why ? 

What two important rivers have their mouths on 
the German coast of the Baltic ? What two on the Ger¬ 
man coast of the North Sea ? 

These two seas together may be called the northern 
Mediterranean, and the countries bordering on them 
are the home of the Germanic or Teutonic races, includ¬ 
ing the English, Dutch, Germans, Danes and Scandi¬ 
navians. Just as the older civilizations of Phoenecia, 
Egypt, Greece, Rome and Carthage clustered around the 
Mediterranean, so these northern nations have had 
their double northern sea as a common highway for 
commerce and war. 

Note that the northern coast of Germany lies in a 
uniform line almost east and west on these two seas, 
with the exception of one serious break, the Cimbrian 
or Jutland peninsula, which extends northward from 
Hamburg about 300 miles. In consequence of this 
break, vessels from French, English or Dutch ports 
bound for German or Russian ports on the Baltic must 
lengthen their round trip by about 600 miles, and brave 
the dangers of the Skaw and the rough passage of the 
Skagger Rack and Cattegat. To shorten this trip and 
decrease its dangers has been a problem for centuries. 

THE GREAT GERMAN CANAL. 

As early as the 13th century efforts were made to cut 
a canal across the isthmus which joins Jutland to the 
main-land. A little canal was for many years in operation, 


GENERAL FACTS OF INTEREST. 


17 


but it was large enough only for small river craft. But 
when, in 1866, Prussia obtained by conquest from Den¬ 
mark the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, which oc¬ 
cupy this neck of land (see map), plans were at once 
adopted for building a ship canal; and when in 1870 the 
German Empire was established, the plans began to take 
definite shape. In 1887 Emperor William performed the 
ceremony of publicly opening the work of making a ship 
canal which, now completed, ranks as a work of engi¬ 
neering skill, and in commercial importance, with the 
Suez canal, the Mt. Cenis tunnel or the transcontinental 
railways. It extends from a point near Kiel to the 
mouth of the Elbe near Hamburg (see map.) In case of 
war this canal will be of great use to Germany, for it 
is large enough to admit the heaviest war vessels, 
and by means of it the two parts of the German fleet 
could quickly co-operate in either sea. Both entrances 
are guarded by fortifications. 

The thousands of vessels that annually pass through 
the sound near Copenhagen, and that at Elsinore used 
to pay the duty or ‘sund-toll’ till about thirty years 
ago, will hereafter mostly pass through the great canal. 
The increased speed and safety will very greatly increase 
the marine intercourse between the two German coasts 
and surrounding countries. 

Through the heart of Schleswig-Holstein now passes 
this great artery of commerce. Kiel will gain what Co¬ 
penhagen will lose. On fine days, the sound near Copen¬ 
hagen was formerly whitened by the sails of the mer¬ 
chant navy of northern Europe; but vessels now crowd 
toward and from the beautiful shores surrounding the 


18 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


grand inlet of the canal at Haltenau, near Kiel. Those 
coming from the east disappear in the beautiful beech 
forests encircling the placid waters of the harbor of 
Kiel; a few hours later they emerge from the level, low 
and rich marshland on the west, and ride on the billows 
of the tide-stirred North Sea. Thus, the beautiful, lake¬ 
like Baltic and the everchanging German Ocean are 
united by the strong bond of commerce. 

This canal is lighted throughout its entire length by 
electricity. 

HOLLAND. 

Spend a lesson or two on this interesting country, 
Hollow-land, Low Land, Netherlands or Underlands. 
Note the significance of the name. The dikes in some 
places from 20 to 40 feet high, keep out the sea. 
Imagine yourself standing on the ocean shore looking 
at the water almost level with the point where you 
stand ; on the other side are fields, gardens, houses and 
streets, away down below you some forty feet. Or 
imagine yourself in the street of a coast town in Hol¬ 
land looking up to the ships at the wharf near the top 
of the dike 40 feet above you. But rain falls on the 
land; how does it get out to the ocean ? When the 
feeble minded who never think, but answer in mere 
words, tell you the}" “let it out through flood gates” 
you will have a chance to teach a lesson in physics. 
When the inquisitive boy wants to know how the dikes 
were started in the first place, you must be ready to 
meet him with at least a reasonable suggestion as to 
how they might have been made. Is any part of our 
country protected by dikes? (Windmills, pumps. 


THE RHINE BASIN. 


19 


canals, skating.) But large rivers, notably the Rhine, 
How through this “hollow-land”; surely not all the 
water of the rivers is pumped over the dikes. What 
then ? Dikes are built on either side. How far up the 
river must these dikes be built? In sailing up the 
Rhine through Holland one may stand on the boat and 
look down into the chimneys of the cottages. 

SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS. 

The Coast of Norway and Holland. Amber. Sum¬ 
mer and Winter in Holland. Copenhagen and Berlin 
compared. (Encourage the reading of books of travel 
that may be found in the school ’library and in the 
homes.) 

IV. 

THE RHINE BASIN. 

The Rhine. Note rhat it has many mouths. Form¬ 
erly it flowed into the Zuyder Zee, but that outlet is 
now nearly choked up. Afterward it flowed through a 
mouth past Leyden which still receives some of its 
water. 

Leyden is the oldest city of Holland. What is a 
Leyden jar? Plow were the “Pilgrim Fathers” asso¬ 
ciated with this city ? 

Rotterdam is an important commercial city. 

The Meuse , a very sluggish river in its lower course, 
mingles in the network of streams forming the delta of 
the Rhine. Teach a little physical geography now con¬ 
cerning the two kinds of river mouths—deltas and estu¬ 
aries, and what c^ditions give rise to each. 


20 

TRACING 

AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 

1 . 

Amsterdam. 

34. 

Brussels. 

2. 

Leyden. 

35. 

Waterloo. 

3. 

Rhine River. 

36. 

Ghent. 

4. 

Rotterdam. 

37. 

Strait of Dover. 

5. 

Meuse River. 

38. 

Dover. 

6. 

Liege. 

39. 

Calais. 

7. 

Sedan. 

40. 

English Channel. 

8. 

Cologne. 

41. 

Seine River. 

9. 

Moselle River. 

42. 

Havre. 

10. 

Metz. 

43. 

Rouen. 

11. 

Nancy. 

44. 

Paris. 

12. 

Coblentz. 

45. 

Versailles. 

13. 

Ehrenbreitstein. 

46. 

Cherbourg. 

14. 

Bingen. 

47. 

Channel Islands, Jersey, 

15. 

Mayence. 


Gurnsey, Alderney, Sark. 

16. 

Mayne River. 

48. 

Brest. 

17. 

Frankfort. 

49. 

Bay of Biscay. 

18. 

Nuremberg. 

50. 

Loire River. 

19. 

Ludwig’s Canal. 

51. 

Nantes. 

20. 

Neckar River. 

52. 

Tours. 

21. 

Heidelberg. 

53. 

Orleans. 

22. 

Stuttgart, Black Forest Mts. 54. 

St. Etienne. 

23. 

Strasburg. 

55. 

Cevenne Mts. 

24. 

Basle. 

56. 

Gironde River. 

25. 

Aar River. 

57. 

Dordogne River. 

26. 

Zurich. 

58. 

Garonne River. 

27. 

Lake Zurich. 

59. 

Bordeaux. 

28. 

Berne. 

60. 

Toulouse. 

29. 

Mt. St. Gothard. 

61. 

Languedoc Canal. 

30. 

Falls of Shafhausen. 

62. 

The Landes 

31. 

Lake Constance. 

63. 

Bayonne. 

32. 

Scheldt River. 

64. 

Pyrenees Mountains. 

33. 

Antwerp. 




Liege. The three European cities most noted for the 
manufacture of fire arms are Liege, Birmingham and St. 
Etienne; but Liege manufactures twice as many as 
both the others. 

Sedan. Napoleon III was captured here in the 
Franco-Prussian war in 1870 by the Germans under 
King William of Prussia, afterward Emperor William. 
Sedan chairs were invented and made here. What is a 
sedan chair ? 

Cologne. What is eau de Cologne? One of the 


THE RHINE BASIN. 


21 


most famous cathedrals of Europe is here. It was over 
700 years in building and was finished only a few years 
ago. The devil is said to have furnished the plans to 
the architect, on the usual conditions which accompany 
his favors in all the medieval stories in which he helps 
men. Cologne is nearly as large as Milwaukee. 



Thus far in our journey up the Rhine we have been 
traveling over what is known as its lower course. 
Above Cologne the country is not so flat, the scenery 


22 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


becomes more interesting, and old ruined castles are seen 
on the mountain sides. 

Metz, on the Moselle, was captured by the Germans 
in 1870 after a long siege. It is the most important 
city in Lorraine, one of the provinces that were taken 
from France by Germany. 

Nancy , noted for embroidery. The birthplace of 
Claude Lorraine. Who was Claude Lorraine ? 

Coblentz , at the confluence of the Moselle and Rhine, 
is a strongly fortified town protected by the fortress of 
Ehrenbreitstein (Broad stone of honor.) 

Bingen is noted for picturesque old ruins, also for 
weird stories. Read the story of Bishop Hatto and his 
“Mouse tower on the Rhine.” 

Mentz, Mainz or Mayence , opposite the mouth of 
the Mayne River, is the birthplace of Gutenberg. Who 
was he ? 

Frankfort, the birthplace of Goethe, was for a long 
time the place where the German emperors were crowned. 
Charlemagne here led an army of Franks across a 
ford and thus gave it its name. 

Nuremberg is noted for the manufacture of toys. 

Heidelberg, on the Neckar, has one of the oldest and 
most famous universities in Europe. In the basement of 
an old castle on a high hill is a wine tun that holds 50,000 
gallons. What is a tun ? Compare the size of this tun 
with your schoolroom. 

Stuttgart, near the Neckar, on the east slope of the 
Black Forest Mountains, is the capital of Wurtemberg. 


THE RHINE BASIN. 


23 


Strasburg , a few miles west of the Rhine, the capital 
of Alsace-Lorraine, is noted for its fine cathedral with a 
tower 466 feet high. In it is perhaps the most wonder¬ 
ful clock in the world. “In the upper part of the clock 
are four old men who strike the quarter hours. Death 
comes out at each hour to strike, but Christ, with a 
spear in his hand, drives him back; but when the last 
quarter comes, Christ goes inside and Death comes out 
and strikes the hour with a bone in his hand, and then 
the chimes sound.’’ 

In 1870 the German army laid' siege to Strasburg 
for seven weeks and captured it. Grave fears were en¬ 
tertained lest in the bombardment the cathedral should 
be destro 3 r ed ; but it received no injury, although many 
other buildings were demolished. 

Basle is the first Swiss city we reach in going up 
the Rhine. Being the nearest neutral city to the seat of 
warit was agreat resort in 1870 for American and Eng¬ 
lish tourists and war correspondents. Note the abrupt 
bend in the Rhine here. Above this point is the upper 
course, and from here down to Cologne is the middle 
course of the Rhine. 

Zurich, on Lake Zurich , is one of the most important 
cities of Switzerland. 

Berne on the Aar is the capital of Switzerland. 

Mt. St. Gothard is an important culminating point 
from which flow four rivers in different directions. We 
shall reach it several times more by different routes in 
our journey around Europe. 

The Falls of Shafhausen and Lake Constance afford 
beautiful scenery, as also does all the region of the Alps. 


21 TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 

Note that the Rhine flows east and the Aar west from 
the same mountains, that they enclose a circular piece of 
land and then flow together. 

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 

Observe the distinction between the terminations 
berg and burg in German names. They differ both in 
meaning and pronunciation. 

In English and American names burg or burgh is a 
contraction of borrough, a village. Butin German, burg 
means a castle or stronghold, and berg means a hill. Thus 
Heidelberg means huckleberry hill. We find the same 
root in iceberg. The syllable bourg is the same as burg , 
the o having been introduced by the French. Thus we 
have Cherbourg and, until recently, Strasbourg. 

The Rhine is the natural, historic boundary 
between the French and German peoples, but at 
different places the actual, political boundary has been 
pushed over on the side of the weaker nation. At pres¬ 
ent the French have no possessions on the Rhine. The 
two little countries ftt the mouth and at the source of 
the Rhine form a striking contrast geographically, but 
historically there is much resemblance between them. 
What striking difference between them does the map 
show ? If you have access do Motley’s Rise of the Dutch 
Republic, read a few pages of the first chapter in 
connection with this lesson. 

Since Germany slopes north, the conditions are 
favorable to uniformity of climate, for the effects of 
altitude and of latitude counteract each other. 

There is no Swiss language. French, German and 
Italian are used by the people of those cantons that lie 


BELGIUM AND WESTERN FRANCE. 


25 


nearest to France, Germany and Italy respectively. In 
the parliamentary assembly members use any one of 
the three languages; sometimes a member will begin a 
speech in French, end it in German, and be replied to in 
Italian; but the records are kept in French. 

Emil Frey, who was President of Switzerland in 
1896 was once a “hired man,” working by the month 
for an Illinois farmer. He served in the Union army in 
our civil war. 


V. 

+ 

BELGIUM AND WESTERN FRANCE. 

Can your pupils make from memory a good sketch of the Rhine 
basin, or of the Scandinavian Peninsula, or the Baltic Sea, or the 
western rivers of France, locating all the places thus far learned ? Can 
they recite these places in the order in which they would be reached in 
making a journey by water around the coast and sailing up the 
rivers ? Can they make such a journey in either direction ? Can they 
state the leading facts about the cities, rivers, countries, climate and 
productions of the regions studied ? Can you ? If not, the best thing 
to do is to ‘ begin at the beginning, ” put aside all dawdling, half¬ 
hearted work and “get down to business.” But if they ( and you ) 
can do what is noted above, then take courage and persevere You 
have mastered nearly half the map work of Europe. Similar work on 
North America, with some very general work on the other grand 
divisions will give them an equipment in this branch that will be a 
life possession of much greater value than any series of stories how¬ 
ever entertaining about peculiar people and their customs in out-of- 
the-way regions of the earth. 

What kind of a text does the teacher who is prepared to teach 
geography need ? First, and chiefly.it should have good, clear inaps 
not overloaded with details. Second, the descriptive text should 
recognize the comparative importance of places and peoples, and should 
be brief and accurate. No expansion of interesting topics, or rhe¬ 
torical word painting can be indulged in, or the book would swell to 
enormous proportions. It should furnish the texts —the discourses 
will be found in the library and the geographical readers, or will be 
supplied from the teacher’s and pupils’ general reading. Third, there 
should be some pictures of characteristic scenery in foreign lands, 
especially where it differs widely from the child’s home surroundings. 

The Scheldt , a sluggish, crooked river, drains the 
larger part of Belgium. Let the pupils decide from the 


26 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


map whether this river is of more value for navigation 
or for water power. 

Antwerp, the second city of Belgium, is the second 
city of continental Europe in maritime commerce, 
Hamburg being the first. 

Brussels, the capital and largest city of Belgium, is 
about one-third as large as Chicago.* It is noted for the 
manufacture of lace and carpets. 

Waterloo, a famous battlefield (not a town) nine, 
miles south of Brussels, is marked not by monuments 
but only by a large mound of earth. As this battle is the 
most famous of modern times it is well to learn a few 
facts about it. The date, June 18, 1815, the names of 
the generals, the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon 
Bonaparte, and the result, the defeat and capture of 
Napoleon and his banishment to St. Helena should be • 
learned. Let the pupils find St. Helena. If the readers 
in use contain Byron’s lines, 

There was a sound of revelry by night, 

And Belgium’s capital had gathered then 
Her beauty and her chivalry— 

now would be a good time to read the selection. 

Ghent, built on twenty-four islands, is connected with 
the North Sea by a ship canal. What treaty of peace 
was signed here ? 

Now sum up a few leading facts about Belgium. It 
is a small country, and is the most densely populated 
part of Europe. It has plenty of coal and iron, hence 
a manufacturing country. There is no Belgian language. 
The Flemish is used by a majority of the people, many 

* The frequent reference to Chicago and Milwaukee in comparing the size of 
cities is explained by the fact that these lessons were originally written for teachers 
in the Northwest. Any cities of like size can easily be substituted by teachers in 
other sections of the country, as units of comparison. 


BELGIUM AND WESTERN FRANCE. 


27 


use the French, and others the German. Government 
records are kept in French. 

Strait of Dover. How wide is it? Does the map 
suggest why it is rough and turbulent ? Engineers esti¬ 
mate that it would be practicable to build a tunnel 
under the strait connecting England and France. About 
a quarter of a million travelers cross from Dover to 
Calais each year. 

English Channel. Observe its direction and shape. 
The French coast of the channel affords no good natural 
harbors; the English man}'. 

Havre , at the mouth of the Seine, is the great Atlantic 
seaport of France. It is to France what Hamburg is to 
Germany. 

Rouen , the birthplace of LaSalle, is a city famous in 
history and has great cotton factories. Joan of Arc 
was burned here. Why ? By whom ? Who was she ? 

Paris , the second city of the world and one of the 
most beautiful, the capital of France, owes its beauty 
to Napoleon III, under whose reign it was practically 
rebuilt on the modern plan. Spend a lesson or two on 
Paris, encouraging the pupils to read from reference 
books and gather the most important facts. 

Versailles , a suburb of Paris of about 50,000 
inhabitants, is noted for the fine palace built by Louis the 
XIV, which cost so much that he destroyed the accounts. 

Cherbourg has an artificial harbor, protected by 
the greatest breakwater in the world. It was here 
that the Alabama and the Kearsarge met in 1864. 
Review the history of these vessels. Why did they fight 


28 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


as soon as they met ? Who was captain Semmes ? 
What and where is Roncador reef ? 

Channel Islands. Observe that the names of these 
islands are the names of different breeds of cattle. They 
are famous for dairy farming and fisheries. The islands 
belong to England, but the inhabitants speak French. 

Brest , the finest natural harbor on the coast of 
France, is connected by ocean cable direct with Duxbury, 
Massachusetts. 

Bay of Biscay. Navigation is difficult on this bay 
on account of storms and circular currents. The 
Spanish coast of the bay is high and rocky, the French 
low and sandy. Does the map indicate this ? 

Loire River is navigable farther than any other 
river of France. In its lower course it is protected by 
dikes 20 feet high. 

Nantes and Tours are important business cities. 

Orleans , at the big northern bend of the Loire, is of 
great importance historically. Who was the “Maid of 
Orleans ” ? 

Si. Etienne in the upper valley of the Loire, is one 
of the greatest coal fields in France. It is sometimes 
called “the Pittsburg of France” from the smoky 
atmosphere that prevails on account of the factories 
using soft coal. Cutlery and fire-arms are made there. 

The Gironde is the wide mouth or estuary into- 
which the Dordogne and Garonne flow. 

A curious fact about the Garonne is that it rises on the southern 
slope of the Pyrenees, and, flowing for a short distance on the Spanish 
side, turns and flows by a subterranean channel through the mountain, 
coming out on the French side. 

Bordeaux exports much wine; it is a very old city. 


THE SPANISH PENINSULA. 


29 


Toulouse , a manufacturing city on the upper Garonne, 
is connected with the Mediterranean by the 

Languedoc Canal which is soon to be enlarged to a 
ship canal. 

Note that France, like Germany, has her coast on two seas, and 
that a ship canal connecting them would be of great use in time of 
war. 


The Landes, a low, level coast region in south¬ 
western France, is useful chiefly for grazing. The people 
there are great stilt walkers, sometimes using stilts 
fifteen feet high. 

Bayonne is the last town of southern France. In 
early times a regiment of soldiers raised here used sharp 
pointed sticks in the ends of their guns for spears; this 
gave rise to the weapon and the word bayonet. 

Pyrenees Mountains on the boundary between France 
and Spain, are due east of Milwaukee. 

Whenever convenient make the lesson end with a natural unit of 
work, and select such units as review topics. The most important 
natural units thus far are: (1.) The west slope of Scandinavia. (2.) 
The Scandinavian Peninsula. ^3.) The Baltic Basin. (4.) The 
Elbe Basin. (5.) The Rhine Basin. (6.) The West Slope of France. 

VI. 

THE SPANISH PENINSULA. 

Have the map thoroughly learned as fully as it appears in this 
sketch, so that the pupils can name all the places. The map work is 
not well done until the class can make a map from memory as full as 
this sketch. While this drill is going on, the map itself is the 
thing of most importance. Make it the prime object of thought. 
Nevermind the “conception of the realities of which the dead map 
forms are only symbols.” The business in hand now has to do with 
dots and lines, eye training, manual skill, the study of form, the not¬ 
ing of directions and relative distances, and the memorizing of names 
—mere names, empty names. But after the few days of drill necessary 
for this, the breath of life will be put into the dead forms. This drill 
need not be drudgery; most pupils can be led to enjoy it. But if 
it should prove to be drudgery, then so be it; there is no royal road. 


30 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 





1 . 

Bayonne. 

16. 

Granada. 

2. 

Cantabrian Mountains. 

17. 

Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

3. 

Cape Finisterre. 

18. 

Cadiz. 

4. 

Oporto. 

19. 

Gibraltar: Cape, Rock, 

5. 

Douro River. 


Strait. Fort. 

6 . 

Valladolid. 

20. 

Mediterranean Sea. 

7. 

Lisbon. 

21. 

Malaga. 

8. 

Tagus River. 

22. 

Balearic Islands. (Pronou 

9. 

Madrid. 


in four syllables.) 

10. 

Cape St. Vincent. 

23. 

Valencia. 

11. 

Gaudiana River. 

24. 

Ebro River. 

12. 

Palos. 

25. 

Barcelona. 

13. 

Guadalquivir River. 

26. 

Pyrenees Mountains. 

14. 

Seville. 

27. 

Gulf of the Lion. 

15. 

Genii River. (Pronounce 

28. 

Languedoc Canal. 


Hay-neel'.) 

29. 

Mouth of the Rhone. 


The Cantabrian Mountains are a continuation of the 
Pyrenees, but not so high. 




THE SPANISH PENINSULA. 


31 


Finisterre , (Finis, end; terre, land). Compare the 
derivation of Mediterranean, Tierra del Fuego, territo¬ 
ry, inter, subterranean, terrestiial, etc. This cape is 
due east of Milwaukee and of Portsmouth, N. H. 

Oporto, like Bordeaux, exports much wine and gives 
the name to port wine. 

Valladolid, the old capital of Spain, is the place 
where Columbus died. 

Lisbon , the capital of Portugal, has one of the finest 
harbors in the world. In 1755 the city was ruined by 
an earthquake which killed 40,000 people in ten minutes. 

The Tagus is the largest river of this peninsula, but 
is navigable only as far as the Spanish boundary. 

Madrid is half as large as Chicago. Among all the 
capitals of Europe it is probably the least attractive. 

Hold the map at a little distance and you will see in 
the west coast the profile of a thin-faced, sharp-nosed 
old man. Cape Finisterre is the front of his cap or fore¬ 
head; Oporto, his eye; at Lisbon are the small sharp 
nose and mustache; Cape St. Vincent is the chin; the 
throat and neck slope back to Gibraltar. 

Palos is associated with Columbus and the dis¬ 
covery of America. 

Seville is famous for fine buildings and for bull fights. 
The great bull ring is arranged to seat 18,000 spectators. 

Cadiz is one of the oldest cities in the world, having 
been founded about 3,000 years ago. 

Gibraltar is one of the strongest forts in the world 
and is owned by England. But it no longer commands 
the entrance to the Mediterranean, for modern steam 
vessels can enter against the strong current which is 


32 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


near the African shore and can thus keep out of the 
range of cannon. 

Malaga is also a very old city, and is noted for its 
wonderfully uniform*, dry and clear weather. Malaga 
grapes and raisins are shipped from here. Green grapes 
are packed in chipped or coarsely pulverized cork, and 
shipped* across the ocean in barrels or casks. What is 
cork, and how is it obtained ? Let the pupils try to im¬ 
agine all the bottle corks, fish net floats, life preservers, 
cork soles of shoes, etc., in one large city—in the whole 
United States—in all the world; then remember that 
almost the entire supply of cork for the whole world 
comes from this peninsula. The acorn of the cork oak 
is a sweet, edible nut resembling the chestnut in taste. 

Balearic is from a Greek word meaning to throw. 
The ancient inhabitants of these islands were famous for 
their skill with the sling. 

Valencia is a fine city built in a big orchard; its 
waterworks were constructed eight hundred years ago 
by the Moors. 

The Ebro is the only large river of Spain which flows 
eastward. It is of but little use for navigation. 

Call attention to the highest object the pupils have 
seen—say a church spire 200 feet high. Let them imag¬ 
ine eight such spires one on top of another. Now sup¬ 
pose a wall 1,700 feet high were built all around the 
shore of this peninsula and the whole of Spain and 
Portugal were leveled off as smooth as a flower bed; it 
would just about fill the space within the wall level to 
the top. If France were leveled off in the same way, and 
one were to walk from Spain to France he would have 


EASTERN FRANCE AND ITALY. 


33 


to step down a distance of over a thousand feet, for 
France averages only about 600 feet above sea level. 

Note the peculiar arrangement of mountains in par¬ 
allel ranges running east and west with narrow valleys 
between. Consult the text-book for climate and pro¬ 
ductions, and note that the climate is considerably 
affected by the Sahara* desert on the south. 

VII. 

EASTERN FRANCE AND ITALY. 

The French propose to change the Languedoc Canal 
into a ship canal large enough for the largest ocean 
steamers. When this is done, how will it affect Gibral¬ 
tar ? Of what advantage to commerce ? Of what ad¬ 
vantage to France in case of war ? 

The Durance rises near Mont Cenis , not far from 
which is a famous railroad tunnel over seven miles long. 

The Isere rises near the highest mountain in Europe, 
which is Mont Blanc , 15,732 feet high. 

Lyons , the second city of France, is about one-third 
as large as Chicago. It is the center of the silk industry, 
over one hundred thousand looms are employed here in 
weaving silk. 

Read in your cyclopedia about silk and silkworms. The story 
of the two monks who secretly brought silkworms from China 
to Europe hidden in a hollow cane will interest the pupils. In this 
country, Patterson, N. J., is the center of the silk industry. 

The Saone and Rhone join in such a way as to raise 
the question which is the main stream and which the 
branch. Show that size and length of river, and size of 
basin, not direction, determine the question. 

Geneva is famous as a literary center; watches and 
jewelry are made here in great quantities. Let the 


34 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


class associate Geneva with Cherbourg in United States 
History: Alabama —Kearsarge —Cherbourg —Arbitra¬ 
tion—Award. 



Point out the resemblance of Italy to a boot, a long military boot 
with a high heel and small toe; the foot seems drawn back to kick 
the football, Sicily; notice the spur above the heel. 


Lake Geneva is clear, deep, and beautiful. Its sur¬ 
face rises and falls near Geneva from three to five feet 
in a few hours; this is supposed to be due to varying 






EASTERN FRANCE AND ITALY. 


35 


air pressure. “The Rhone enters the lake at the upper 
end, turbid and yellow, and leaves it at the city of 
Geneva clear as glass and of a deep blue tint. From 
the lake Mont Blanc is visible, and although 60 miles 
distant is often reflected in its waters. ” Read Byron’s 
Prisoner of Chillon. 


Teach the map of eastern France and of Italy so 
that pupils can indicate in sketches the following: 


1 . 

Rhone River. 

24. 

Tiber River. 

2. 

Durance River. 

25. 

Rome. 

3. 

Mont Cenis. 

26. 

Naples. 

4. 

Isere River. 

27. 

Mt. Vesuvius. 

5. 

Mont Blanc. 

28. 

The buried cities: Hercula¬ 

6. 

Lyons. 


neum, Pompeii. 

7. 

Saone River. 

29. 

Lipari Islands. 

8. 

Geneva. 

30. 

Stromboli. 

9. 

Lake Geneva. 

31. 

Sicily. 

10. 

Mt. St. Gothard. 

32. 

Palermo. 

11. 

Marseilles. 

33. 

Malta. 

12. 

Toulon. 

34. 

Syracuse. 

13. 

Nice. 

35. 

Mt. Etna. 

14. 

Gulf of Genoa. 

36. 

Strait of Messina. 

15. 

Genoa. 

37. 

Scyllaand Charybdis. 

16. 

Arno River. 

38. 

Gulf of Taranto. 

17. 

Pisa. 

39. 

Strait of Otranto. 

18. 

Florence. 

40. 

Adriatic Sea. 

19. 

Apennine Mountains. 

41. 

Po River. 

20. 

Leghorn. 

42. 

Milan. 

2i. 

Island of Elba. 

43. 

Turin. 

22. 

Island of Corsica. 

44. 

Venice. 

23. 

Island of Sardinia. 

45. 

Trieste. 


The Rhone rises 

near St. 

Gothard; not far from 


this mountain is a railroad tunnel nine miles long. 

The Hoosac tunnel in Massachusetts is five miles long. The 
longest tunnel in the world is almost completed through the Andes 
Mountains between Argentina and Chili. It will be over 12 miles 
long. 

The upper Rhone is noted for the very great num¬ 
ber of glaciers which its valley contains, the most 
famous of which is the Met de Glace near Mont Blanc. 
What is a glacier? So man}' tourists are among the 


36 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Alps every summer that these mountains are called the 
plav'ground of Europe. 

Marseilles , the third city of France, is an important 
commercial center; its trade has grown rapidly since 
the opening of the Suez canal. Do 3 ^ou see why ? 

Toulon and Nice are important French cities; the 
latter is a winter resort for invalids, and is the birth¬ 
place of Garibaldi. 

Genoa , the birthplace of Columbus, is built on hill¬ 
sides sloping up from a circular harbor in the form of an 
amphitheater. 

The Arno rises in the Apennines , the backbone of 
the Italian peninsula. 

Pisa is noted for the famous leaning tower. If the 
text-book does not give a picture of it, have the pupils 
look at the picture in the cyclopedia. 

Florence is briefly described in Longfellow’s “Fal¬ 
con of Sir Federigo.” 

Leghorn is a large city which takes its name from a 
kind of wheat with a peculiarly small and tough straw 
from which leghorn hats are made. 

Elba is the island to which Napoleon Bonaparte 
was banished in 1814. 

Corsica, a large island belonging to France, is the 
birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Sardinia is noted for the production of wheat, min¬ 
erals and sardines. Five-sixths of the people cannot read 
or write. 

Rome on the Tiber, a city of 400,000 population, 
formerly had 2,000,000 inhabitants. It is surrounded 
by a desolate, uninhabited region, mostly marshland, 



EASTERN FRANCE AND ITALY. 


37 


wholly unfit for cultivation; the cit}^ has no manufac¬ 
tures and little commerce. As a modern city it could 
not exist except for the fact that it is the capital, and 
the home of the Pope, and that many tourists spend 
money there. But it is famous historically, and its ruins 
are among the most interesting in Europe. 

Naples , the metropolis of Italy, has great commer¬ 
cial interests, and is a busy, modern city. Its attract¬ 
iveness and delightful climate gave rise to the saying 
“See Naples and die,” as if there were nothing more 
worth living for after seeing so fine a city. Its streets 
are paved with lava from 

Vesuvius is the most noted volcano in the world; 
it now has two distinct peaks, but in former.times it 
had but one. It is 4000 feet high and 30 miles around 
the base. The crater is nearH half a mile across. “ A 
rope railroad carries visitors to within a short distance 
of the crater. Half way up the volcano, an observatory 
has been built to study the eruptions and watch for 
indications of an approaching earthquake. The region 
around Vesuvius has been densely populated for twenty 
centuries in spite of its many eruptions. The great 
eruption of August 24, A. D. 79, which destroyed Hercula¬ 
neum and Pompeii is the first one of importance. It 
was not lava, but showers of ashes condensed into mud 
by the rain produced by the steam of the volcano that 
seems to have overwhelmed these cities. In an eruption 
in 472 the ashes were carried to Constantinople, and in 
1066 the lava flow reached the sea. The next great 
eruption was in 1631 when 18,000lives were lost. The 


38 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


eruptions have increased in frequency, and the volcano is 
never entirely quiet.” 

The buried cities Herculaneum and Pompeii will furnish material 
for an interesting lesson. The teacher should“spend some time read¬ 
ing about these wonderful ruins. 

Lipari Islands are a group of volcanic islands; 
Stromboli , the largest volcano among them, is almost 
always in an active state of eruption. 

Sicily is the largest and most fertile island in the 
Mediterranean, and produces great quantities of fruit, 
wheat and sardines. 

The Strait of Messina has dangerous rapids and 
rocks on either side, but the navigation is safe in the 
middle. The ancients imagined that two monsters 
called Scylla and Charybdis were on the sides of this 
strait; Hence arose the saying “ To avoid Scylla and go 
to wreck on Charybdis,” meaning to avoid one ex¬ 
treme and go to the other. 

Etna is another great volcano. In Roman 
mythology a race of giants was said to have lived in 
Sicily; they became too strong, and Jupiter undertook to 
kill them off. This he did by hurling thunderbolts at 
them; but the biggest one, Enceladus by name, he could 
not kill, but wounded him and piled upon him rocks 
and earth in a great mound (Etna). Enceladus 
they say is still alive and sometimes groans, and in 
trying to arise causes earthquakes. 

Read to the class Longfellow’s little poem Enceladus. The peo¬ 
ple of Sicily are devout and superstitious, and three-fourths of them 
cannot read. 

The Po is the largest river of Italy, and drains an 
area half as large as Illinois. In its eastern half it runs 
very slowly through a level, fertile plain. Its delta is 


TURKEY AND GREECE. 


39 


forming perhaps more rapidly than that of any other 
river in the world. Ravenna, once a seaport, is now 
four miles inland. The Po basin was once an arm of the 
Adriatic, and a slight subsidence would again cause it 
to be submerged. 

Milan is about as Targe as Minneapolis; it has a 
famous cathedral, on the outside of which are 6,000 
statues in niches. 

Turin is another fine city on the Po. It was for 
some time the capital of Italy. 

Venice is as large as Chicago. It has no street cars 
and uses no horses. Why? What are gondolas? It is 
built on more than 100 islands. 

Trieste is the only Austrian seaport. It is an im¬ 
portant commercial city. 


VIII. 

TURKEY AND GREECE. 

While working on the map the thing to do is to master the map 
forms. The supposed danger that the pupils will thus come to regard 
the map as an end in itself and not as a symbol is a harmless bugbear 
that does not disturb any sensible teacher. Intelligent people in 
thinking of places they have not seen, call to mind first the map form. 
This arbitrary map form they are able at will to translate into a 
notion more or less closely resembling the reality according to the 
amount of information possessed about the place and the degree of 
skill acquired in forming mental pictures from descriptions. But for 
many purposes this translation is not necessary. To illustrate: When 
one is thinking of a proposed journey by rail, say from St. Paul to 
Cleveland, he may call to mind a black line running diagonally across 
the page to a round or square dot (Chicago) beside an oval, shaded 
portion of the page (Lake Michigan) thence with a curve around the 
lower end of the oval and away toward the right to another dot be¬ 
side a shaded portion shaped somewhat like a whale (Lake Erie ) 
Now since distance and direction are all he cares to consider at pres¬ 
ent, Chicago may very properly remain in his mind a mere dot on a 
page, and it is by no means necessary that he should think of real water 
or real ice in Lake Erie. 


40 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


But as the pupil recites he should have the map in mind, and see 
in imagination the places as they stand related to one another in 
space. Unless the teacher is careful to show the class how to prepare 
the lesson, pupils who have a retentive verbal memory will memorize 
the lists, and while reciting will think only of the words as they appear 
in the list. 


Learn the following places and make a sketch map 
showing their location: 


1. Montenegro. 

2. Ionian Islands. 

3. Gulf of Corinth. 

4. Morea. 

5. Cape Matapan. 

6. Crete. 

7. The Archipelago. 

8. Athens. 

9. Salonica. 

10. Strait of Dardanelles. 

11. Sea of Marmora. 

12. Bosporus. 

13. Constantinople. 

14. Black Sea. 

15. Danube River. 


16. Pruth River. 

17. Galatz. 

18. Bucharest. 

22. Belgrade. 

23. Save River. 

24. Theiss River. 

25. Drave River. 

26. Lake Balaton. 

27. Buda-Pesth. 

28. Vienna. 

29. Isar River. 

30. Munich. 

31. Ludwig’s Canal. 

32. Black Forest Mountains. 


Montenegro is a small principality on the east shore 
*of the Adriatic. The people are brave, hardy moun¬ 
taineers, whose chief business for many years has been 
to fight the Turks. 

Ionian Islands , a group of islands belonging to 
Greece. 


The Gulf of Corin th separates the peninsula of Morea 
(Peloponesus) from the mainland of Greece. Note that 
the Morea is shaped like a clumsy hand with fingers 
spread pointing south; the southern point is 
Cape Matapan , to the southeast of which is 
Crete (Candia) the most southern part of Europe. 
In one respect Crete is like Ireland; there are no snakes 
there. Crete is almost independent, but is nominally 
owned by Turkey. “All Cretans are liars,” was a com¬ 
mon saying in olden times. 




TURKEY AND GREECE. 


41 



Athens , the capital of Greece, is one of the most fa¬ 
mous of ancient cities. It now has about 100,000 in¬ 
habitants. A high, rocky hill in the middle of the cit} r is 
called the Acropolis; it is about 500 feet high, and on its 
summit are the remains of famous temples. 

The Archipelago or Aegean Sea is a beautiful, cheer¬ 
ful region. Note the great number of small islands, some 
of which are very beautiful. 

Salonica is a city of 120,000 people, half of whom 





42 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS 


are Spanish Jews. It is the second most important city 
of Turkey. This was the Thessalonica of the early 
Christians, and its people were called Thessalonians. 

Strait of Dardanelles or The Hellespont is one to 
four miles wide. Near Abydos, a little, ancient city, 
Xerxes crossed into Europe with an army of over a 
million men. About the same place Alexander after¬ 
ward crossed with his army to invade Asia. By an 
agreement among the great nations of Europe no war 
vessel is allowed to pass through this strait without the 
express permission ol Turkey. A strong current runs 
through the strait from 

The Sea of Marmora which is noted for the marble, 
quarries on one of its islands. 

Constantinople , or Stamboul, formerly called Byzan¬ 
tium, on the Bosporus, is the capital of Turkey. An arm 
of the Bosporus called the Golden Horn forms the harbor. 
There are twenty miles of fortifications along the Bos¬ 
porus, and the Dardanelles is also strongly guarded by 
many forts on both sides. 

The Black Sea is so called because to early naviga¬ 
tors it was a gloomy, dismal sea in comparison with the 
beautiful, cheerful Aegean. This is due in part to the 
entire absence of islands and in part to the fogs which 
at some seasons prevail, caused by the thawing of the 
snow on the great Russian plains to the north. 

The delta of the Danube is about as large as the 
state of Rhode Island; it is a swampy wilderness in 
which sea birds, wolves and buffalos abound. The Dan¬ 
ube is the second largest river in Europe, about three 
times as large as the Rhine; it carries as much water as 


TURKEY AND GREECE. 


43 


all the rivers of France, and the yearly deposit of mud, 
sand and gravel at its mouth aggregates a volume of 
ten square miles nine feet deep. Consequently the delta 
is growing. 

The Pruth is the boundary between Russia and 
Roumania. 

Galatz , being the city nearest the mouth of the 
Danube, is of considerable importance commercially. 

Bucharest , a city about as large as Milwaukee, has 
the reputation of being the wickedest city in Europe; it 
has many gambling houses and is said to possess “all 
the vices and few of the refinements of Paris.” It is on 
a little branch of the Danube called the Dambovitza. 

The Iron Gate is a water gap in which the river is 
very rapid and full of jagged rocks. It is on the eastern 
slope of that part of the Carpathian Mountains called 
the Transylvanian Alps. The rushing torrent boiling 
and seething among the rocks makes a dangerous and 
practically impassable series of rapids, thus cutting the 
Danube into two parts so far as commerce is concerned. 
But a canal has recently been built to overcome this 
obstruction. 

Note that the Carpathian Mountains, the Transyl¬ 
vanian Alps and the Balkan Mountains form a big in¬ 
verted letter S which is cut by the river at Iron Gate. 
In ages past, before the river had worn its channel down 
to its present level in this gap, the region above Iron 
Gate was a great lake. This old lake bottom is now 
a fertile, even, and in some places low and somewhat 
marshy region, valuable for agriculture and grazing. 

The Theiss River runs parallel with the Danube for 


44 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


many miles. Its tributaries are on the east side. Why ? 

Lake Balaton may be considered a remnant of the 
great inland sea which formerly reached to the moun¬ 
tains. In this vicinity are some extensive goose pas¬ 
tures. 

Buda-Pesth, the chief city and capital of Hungar}q 
is noted for having the highest death rate of all the cities 
of Europe. Some famous bridges span the river here. 

Note the square bend in the river above Buda-Pesth. 

Vienna is about as large as Chicago. It is a fine city, 
the capital of Austria-Hungary. It has the largest park 
in Europe, and is the seat of a great university. Most 
of its commerce is carried on by way of Trieste by rail¬ 
way. Why ? 

Munich , the capital of Bavaria, is one of the most 
beautiful cities of Germany; it is famous for its art mu¬ 
seums, the manufacture of telescopes and mathematical 
instruments, and its university. 

Ludwig's Canal joins the Danube with the Rhine. 

The source of the Danube is in the Black Forest 
mountains, not far from Basle. 

The people of Austria-Hungary are heterogeneous in 
their language and manner of life; in Austria they are 
German in speech and origin; in the northern part the 
Bohemians prevail, in the northeastern, the Poles; the 
Hungarians are a separate people in many respects, 
although under the same emperor with the Austrians. 
About a third of the people of Hungary are Mongolians 
called Magyars. They are an aristocratic class, and own 
the land. 


SOUTHERN RUSSIA AND THE CASPIAN BASIN. 45 

IX. 

SOUTHERN RUSSIA AND THE CASPIAN BASIN. 



1 . 

Black Sea. 

12. 

Mount Elburz. 

2. 

Odessa. 

13. 

Derbend. 

3. 

Dnieper River. 

14. 

Caspian Sea. 

4. 

Crimea. 

15. 

Volga River and Delta. 

5. 

Sevastopol. 

16. 

Astrakhan. 

6. 

Balaklava. 

17. 

Nijni Novgorod. 

7. 

Strait of Kertch orYenikale. 

18. 

Oka River. 

8. 

Sea of Azov. 

19. 

Moscow. 

9. 

Don River. 

20. 

Valdai Hills. 

10. 

Manitch River. 

21. 

Ural River. 

11. 

Caucasus Mountains. 

22. 

Ural Mountains. 


Odessa is the central shipping point for wheat and 


46 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


other grains raised in southern Russia. It is a modern 
city and has had a rapid growth ; many of the poor in 
Odessa live in caves or galleries hollowed out of the soft 
rock on which the city is built. It gets its water supply 
from the Dnieper river 27 miles distant. Odessa is noted 
for its great grain trade, for its persecution of the Jews, 
and as the home of the cholera. 

In 188 7 the population of Odessa was over a quarter 
of a million, but since that date 70,000 Jews have been 
driven out. 

The Crimean peninsula was the seat of the war 
waged in 1854 by England, France, Turkey and Sar¬ 
dinia against Russia. 

Sevastopol (pronounce Sev-as-to'-pol) was besieged 
for nearly a year. Its strong forts were captured and 
blown up, but have since been re-built. Read the 
account of 

Balaklava in the cyclopedia, then read Tennyson’s 
Charge of the Light Brigade. 

The Black Sea is shaped like a baby’s shoe with the 
toe pointing eastward. The Sea of Azov and the Don 
River are the latchet or string. 

The Manitch River is a chain of lakes for the greater 
part of its course. It rises very near the shore of the 
Caspian Sea. 

The Caucasus Mountains are the boundary between 
Europe and Asia; Mt. Elburz is the highest peak; it is 
18,000 feet high. 

We cannot continue our journey around Europe by 
water, but by making a short portage from the source 
of the Manitch we may launch our boat in 


SOUTHERN RUSSIA AND THE CASPIAN BASIN. 


47 


THE CASPIAN SEA. 

This sea once had a much higher level (over 
200 feet higher) than it now has. This is plainly shown 
by the markings of the old shore line on the surrounding 
rocks. But it is also true that recently (within the his¬ 
toric period) it had a much lower level than it now has. 
This is shown by the fact that at Derbend on the shore 
of the Caspian, a city founded by Alexander the Great, 
masonry is found fifty feet below the present level. 
What caused these changes ? 

When the water stood at the higher level it was an 
arm of the ocean extending from the Arctic regions over 
the basin of the Aral and including the Black Sea and a 
great part of the low land of southern Russia. The 
breaking down of the barrier then existing where the 
Strait of Bosporus now is together with volcanic up¬ 
heavals probably cut it off, leaving it as now a great 
interior basin with no outlet to the ocean, and having 
a surface 50 or 60 feet lower than now. 

But what causes afterward raised the level ? Exam¬ 
ine the map and notice the direction of the upper courses 
of the Don River and the Volga River. They seem to be 
about to flow together, running in converging valleys 
like two confluent branches. But after approaching 
near to each other, they suddenly diverge. Ancient 
geographers state that formerly the Volga emptied into 
the Sea of Azov through the channel which is now the 
lower course of the Don. In this way it had an outlet 
to the ocean even as late as the fifth century of the 
Christian era, when its course changed to where it now 
is. Thus the great floods of water carried by the largest 


48 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


river of Europe were turned into the Caspian, greatly 
enlarging its depth and area. But its surface is still 
lower than that of the Black Sea (the ocean level) by 
about 80 feet. Why does it not fill up any higher ? 

The Caspian has no tides. It is about twice as large 
as the combined area of the Great Lakes of North Amer¬ 
ica, is deep (3,000 feet) in the southern part and shallow 
(not more than 50 feet deep) in the northern part. The 
northern part freezes in winter, but the southern part is 
always open. Some of the schoolbooks say the water 
of the Caspian is very salty, but the fact is it is much 
less salty than that of the ocean or of the Black Sea. 
There are some parts of it where the water is so fresh 
that it may be used for drinking. On the other hand 
there are many of the shallow gulfs and bays along its 
eastern shore so formed as to be catch basins or evap¬ 
orating pans in which the water is so salt as almost 
totally to exterminate animal life. 

The region of the Caspian Sea is the second largest 
oil field in the world. Petroleum wells are found at both 
ends of the Caucasus Mountains. 

After studying the Caspian, let the pupils answer 
questions like the following: 

In what respect is the region southwest of the Caspian like Western 
Pennsylvania ? 

If a large canal were cut from the Black Sea to the Caspian, which 
sea would become larger in consequence ? 

Why is the Caspian of so little importance historically ? Account 
for the absence of great cities on its shores. In this respect how does 
it compare with the Baltic Sea and the North Sea? 

May it be possible that the Caspian has an underground outlet 
to the ocean ? 

Astrakhan , on an island in the Volga, is the principal 


CENTRAL AND NORTHERN RUSSIA. 


49 


city of the Caspian region and is the only port of im¬ 
portance on the sea. 

Nijai Novgorod at the confluence of the Oka and the 
Volga is famous for its great fairs held every year which 
attract many thousands of people from Europe and Asia. 

Moscow, the old capital, is sometimes called “Holy 
Moscow” because of the ancient churches and alleged 
relics of saints that are there. Russia is a Christian 
country, though neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant. 
The Czar is the head of the Eastern or Greek branch of the 
Christian church. The Russians observe the old calen¬ 
dar, which makes the first day of their months corres¬ 
pond to the 13th day of ours. 

X. 

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN RUSSIA. 

From Moscow to St. Petersburg, a distance of about 
400 miles, is a remarkable railroad, the straightest line 
of the same length in the world. It runs through the 
Valdai Hills. 

The towns along this road are sometimes several 
miles from the station. This road is a monument of the 
arbitrary rule of the Czar. When Nicholas directed a 
preliminary survey before building the road, the engi¬ 
neers showed him the proposed route so marked out as 
to run through cities near the line when practicable. He 
had a suspicion that the engineers and the Minister of 
Ways and Roads had been bought up by the towns, and 
were recommending a crooked line because of personal 
considerations. He called for a ruler, and laying it on 
the map, drew a straight line from St. Petersburg to 
Moscow, saying, “Build the road on that line.” When 


50 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


they tried to remonstrate, he simpl\ r said, “You will 
build me the road so.” The road is not quite so straight 
as the story would indicate, but a railroad map will 
show that it varies but little from a bee-line. 

Numerous canals join the head waters of the Volga 
with the Baltic Sea. Canals and railroads in Russia are 
built with a view to military as well as commercial in¬ 
terests. Why is this or that road here or there is not 
always answered by a stud} r of the commercial needs, 
but possible military convenience enters also into the 
question and its answer. 

We may divide Russia into four strips or zones. Run 
a line from east to west through the middle, and in like 
manner divide each half by parallel lines. The southern 
of the four strips is the region of the steppes or treeless 
plains; they are similar to our prairies and are fruitful, 
especially in the western part, but in the eastern part 
are dry and barren. Next north of the steppes is the 
hardwood timber belt, a large part of which has been 
cleared and is cultivated in farms. Then comes the 
great evergreen forest region. This supplies great quan¬ 
tities of lumber. The northern belt is the tundras or 
cold, barren plains. These also are for the most part 
bare of trees but are covered with moss and lichens and 
are mostly uninhabitable. 

Why are there no cities on the northern shore of 
Russia ? 

Besides the Volga, another great river, the Ural, 
flows into the Caspian. In the southern part of the 
Ural Mountains is a region famous for the production 
of gold. Up to the time of the discovery of gold in Cal- 



CENTRAL AND NORTHERN RUSSIA. 


51 


ifornia and Australia it was the most famous gold field 
in the world. 

Nearly all mountain chains extend in the direction 
of one or the other line in the letter X, but the Ural chain 
is an exception; it extends nearly north and south. 

An overland journey northward in Russia near the 
Ural Mountains to the Arctic Ocean would be a difficult 
one to make and would bring us to a desolate coast 
near the islands of Nova Zembla on which nobody lives. 
Sailing westward from here we would come to the 
mouth of the Petchora River, a large stream, but of no 
use for commerce. Why ? 

The White Sea is a great arm of the Arctic Ocean 
which was formerly connected with the Baltic through 
lakes Onega and Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland. On this 
sea is 

Archangel , a cit} r so far north that the shortest day 
is only about three hours in length. Note that even St. 
Petersburg is farther north than Sitka, Alaska. Sitka 
was former^ called New Archangel. Archangel is said 
to be the only city in the world where the reindeer is 
commonly used. 

To the southwest of the White Sea is Finland, a land 
of many lakes, large forests and few cities. It is larger 
than Illinois and Wisconsin combined, but has less than 
half as many inhabitants. 

Between the White Sea and North Cape is Lapland 
which is merely a name applied to those parts of Fin¬ 
land, Russia and Norway in which the Lapps live. The 
Lapps are the smallest and dirtiest race of Europe. The 
adults are only four to five feet high. They are in large 


52 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


part descended from criminals transported from Denmark 
three centuries ago. Without the reindeer most of Lap- 
land would be uninhabitable; it furnishes food, cloth¬ 
ing and means of transportation. 

Arriving again at North Cape, Hammerfest, Loffo- 
den Islands, Maelstrom, Trondhjem, etc., (see page 7) 
we will sail westward and come to 

The Shetland Islands, belonging to Great Britain. 
There are one hundred of them, but only about a fourth 
of them are inhabited. The little, shaggy Shetland 
ponies are native there. Further south are 

The Orkney Islands , about the same in number, and 
about a fourth of these also are inhabited. The popula¬ 
tion is a mixture of Scotch and Scandinavians. These 
islands belonged to Denmark until the time of James III 
of Scotland who married Margaret of Denmark. The 
King of Denmark promised to settle a certain stipulated 
sum as a dowry on Margaret, and put up these islands 
as a sort of collateral security for the payment of the 
sum, entering into a treaty that virtually amounted to 
a mortgage on this property. Failing to pay the cash 
he gave up the islands to England in 1468. 

We now come to the part of Europe which is to us 
by far the most important—the British Isles. 

Lead the pupils to see some reasons why these islands are to us 
the most important part of Europe. Let them note what a large 
part of the world the English speaking people occupy; also that 
these islands are in the center of the land hemisphere. 

XI. 

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 

Notice that in the British Islands, capes are com¬ 
monly called heads; and in Scotland ba 3 ^s are called 
firths. What name is given to bays in Norway ? 


GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 


53 


Teach the pupils to use these terms with proper 
discrimination: England, Great Britain, British Islands, 
the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the British 
Empire. 

Scotland was originally almost cut in two by a 
chain of lakes extending from Moray Firth to the Firth 
of Clyde. This partial water-way has been completed 
by cutting the Caledonian Canal. 

Inverness is a large city in the Highlands and near 
it is the famous battlefield of Culloden. 

The Grampian Hills are the boundary between “The 
Highlands” and “The Lowlands.” 

Aberdeen , means “at the mouth of the Dee.” It is 
the chief city of northern Scotland. 

Dundee is famous for its fine confectionery and 
coarse linen fabrics. A railroad bridge two miles long 
spans the Tay here. 

Edinburgh (Edwin’s castle or fortress) is about as 
large as Milwaukee. It is famous for the production of 
beer, and is one of the most beautiful cities of Europe. 
It has one of the great universities of the world, and is 
a center of scientific and literal activity. 

The Cheviot Hills and the Tweed River form part 
of the boundary between England and Scotland. In 
this region and along the Tweed were fought the bor¬ 
der wars that are commemorated by Walter Scott. 

Newcastle is the center of the great coal region of 
England. What is meant by the old English saying 
“carrying coals to Newcastle” ? 

The Humber , a broad, short river or estuary, re¬ 
ceives several tributaries coming from different direc- 


54 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


tions like radii. On these rivers are the great commer¬ 
cial city of Hull and the manufacturing cities of York, 


<3 



Leeds and Sheffield. Near the source of one of these 





GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 


55 


rivers, the Trent , is Birmingham , noted for steel pens 
and firearms. 20,000,000 steel pens per week are 
made here. What continental cities are noted for fire¬ 
arms ? 


1. 

Duncansby Head. 

37. 

Plymouth. 

2, 

Moray Firth. 

38. 

Land’s End. 

3. 

Inverness. 

39. 

Scillv Islands. 

4. 

Caledonian Canal. 

40. 

Bristol Channel. 

5. 

Aberdeen. 

41. 

Lower Avon River. 

6 . 

Grampion Hills. 

42. 

Bristol. 

7. 

Dundee. 

43. 

Severn River. 

s 

Firth of Forth. 

44. 

Upper Avon River. 

9 ] 

Edinburgh. 

45. 

Stratford. 

10 . 

Tweed River. 

46. 

Swansea. 

11 . 

Cheviot Hills. 

47. 

St. George’s Channel. 

12 . 

Tyne River. 

48. 

Irish Sea. 

13. 

Newcastle. 

49. 

Liverpool. 

14. 

Humber River. 

50. 

Manchester. 

15. 

Hull. 

51. 

Isle of Man. 

16. 

York. 

52. 

Solwav Firth. 

17. 

Deeds. 

53. 

North Channel. 

18. 

Sheffield. 

54. 

Firth of Ch r de. 

19. 

Birmingham. 

55. 

Glasgow. 

20. 

The Wash. 

56. 

Ben Nevis. 

21. 

Great Ouse. 

57. 

Caledonian Canal. 

22. 

Cam River. 

58. 

The Hebrides. 

23! 

Cambridge. 

59. 

Cape Wrath. 

24. 

Thames River. 

60. 

Malin Head. 

25. 

Greenwich. 

61. 

Londonderry. 

26. 

London. 

62. 

Giant’s Causeway. 

27. 

Windsor. 

63. 

Belfast. 

2S. 

Oxford. 

64. 

Dublin. 

29. 

Strait of Dover. 

65. 

Queenstown. 

30. 

Dover. 

66. 

Cork. 

31. 

English Channel. 

67. 

Cape Clear. 

32. 

Isle of Wieht. 

68. 

Valentia Island. 

33. 

Portsmouth. 

69. 

Lakes of Killarney. 

34. 

Avon River. 

70. 

Shannon River. 

35. 

Salisbury Plain. 

71. 

Galway Bay. 

36. 

Stonehenge. 

72. 

Donegal Bay. 


Cambridge is the seat 

of 

one of the most famous 


universities. Note the probable origin of the name. It 


is on the Cam river. 

The Thames is one of the most important rivers in 


56 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


the world. Compare it in size with the Amazon. The 
population of its basin is fifteen times as great as that 
of the Amazon. Think of the different ways in which 
rivers are useful—as water-ways, for power, for irriga¬ 
tion, etc. A river’s importance does not depend on its 
size. The Detroit and the Thames are probably the 
most valuable rivers in the world, the great Colorado, 
one of the least valuable. 

Greenwich is the seat of the Ro\ T al Observatory, the 
place from which most civilized nations take the stand¬ 
ard of time and of determining position. 

London has a population about equal to all New 
England. 

Windsor is the residence of the Queen. In 1215 King 
John was forced to sign the Magna Chart a at Runny- 
mede, near Windsor. 

Oxford is noted for its great university. 

The Isle of Wight was the home of Tennyson. 

Portsmouth is the strongest fortified port of Great 
Britain. 

Stonehenge , on Salisbury Plain , is a famous group 
of Druidical ruins. Look at the word in the cyclopedia 
and in the dictionary. 

Bristol Channel has very high tides. 

The Severn is the largest river of England. 

Bristol is an important port. It was from here that 
the Cabots sailed in 1497. , 

Stratford was the home of Shakespeare. 

Swansea , the chief port of Wales, is noted for cop¬ 
per smelting. 

Liverpool is one of the greatest ports in the world ; 




GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 


57 


it has docks seven miles long. Nearly all the cotton 
shipped into Europe first goes to Liverpool. 

Manchester, the chief cotton manufacturing city of 
the world, is now a seaport, a ship canal, one of the 
finest in the world, having been made from the Mersey 
to Manchester. 

The Isle of Man is a famous summer resort. The 
Manx language is spoken here. The Manx cats have 
no tails. 

Glasgow is the second city of Great Britain in size; 
it has the greatest chemical works in the world, and is 
noted for shipbuilding and other manufactures. 

Ben Nevis , near the south end of the Caledonian 
canal, is the highest mountain in the British Isles. 

Cape Wrath, as its name indicates, is a rough and 
dangerous point of the coast. 

Londonderry is a port at which mail is exchanged 
on steamers bound for Liverpool or Glasgow by the 
northern route. 

The Giant’s Causeway is a pavement reaching far 
out from the northeastern shore of Ireland toward the 
Scotch coast. It is formed of over 40,000 columns of 
basalt, and formerly extended across to Scotland.* Be¬ 
cause of the remarkable evenness of the blocks which 
formed the columns the peasants have a legend that is 
indicated in the name. 

Belfast, the center of the Irish linen trade and the 
place where many of the finest ocean steamships are 
made, is the most prosperous city of Ireland. 

♦These columns are about 15 to 20 inches in diameter and 200 feet hicrh. Most 
of them are six-sided, but a few have five, seven, eight or nine sides; of all the 
forty thousand one only is triangular. 


58 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Dahlia was the old capital, and is the residence of 
the Lord-Lieutenant, who represents the British govern¬ 
ment. 

Queenstown has the finest harbor in Europe. 

Cork is the largest city of southern Ireland. 

Valentin Island is the eastern end of several lines 
of Atlantic cables. 

The Lakes of Killarney are famous for their fine 
scenery. 


NORTH AMERICA. 

I. 

NEW ENGLAND. 

If a class not already accustomed to working by this method 
should begin with North America, the first nine places named in the 
list will be enough for the first lesson. The rest may be assigned for 
two lessons. 

The geography of our own country should be learned in closer 
detail than that of foreign lands. But the pupil in any North 
American country should also know more about Europe than about 
the remaining continents. It seems best to introduce the tracing and 
sketching method with the study of the map of Europe; then by the 
time the class has learned that continent, they will have more 
maturity and much greater strength to master the work on North 
America. One of the most marked advantages of this method 
noted by teachers who have used it is the increased power to master 
a map which it imparts and the increased interest which pupils take 
in the work. 

But some teachers will prefer to begin with this lesson. The im¬ 
portant thing is that they move slowly at first, master the lessons as 
fully as the pupils are expected to learn them, and keep in mind that 
there is to be no second going over the work ; as the farmer says in 
plowing his corn the last time, we are now “laying it by.” The 
teacher who begins with this lesson should read the suggestions 
and rules in the first lesson. 

St. Croix River and Passamaq noddy Bay , the eastern 
boundary of Maine; the latter is an arm of the Bay of 


NEW ENGLAND. 


59 


Fundy, which has the highest tides in the world. At 
the upper end of the Bay of Fundy the ocean level rises 
and falls twice a day a distance ot 70 feet. 

Eastport is the most eastern town of the United 
States. 

Mt. Desert Island is a summer resort. 

Penobscot Bay and River. The river rises in north¬ 
ern Maine, a wild and mountainous forest region; 
it is not of much value for navigation, but great 
numbers of logs are floated down from the pine forests 
of the north and sawed at 

Bangor, a great lumbering city. 

Kennebec River rises in Moosehead Lake. What is 
a moose ? What kind of horns does a moose have ? 
The shape of this lake somewhat resembles the flat 
pronged antlers of a moose. 

Augusta is the capital, and Portland the metropolis. 
Let pupils distinguish between capital and metropolis, 
also between capital and capitol. 

Portsmouth is the only seaport of New Hampshire. 
It is due east of Milwaukee. 

The Merrimac River is the greatest manufacturing 
river in the world. 

Lawrence , Lowell , Nashua and Manchester are all 
noted for the making of woven fabrics, especially cotton 
and woolen goods. 

Concord , the capital, has large wagon and carriage 
works. 

The White Mountains are famous for fine scenery; 
Mt. Washington is the highest peak, over 6,000 feet 
high, and is the second highest point of land in the 


60 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


United States east of Colorado. Many tourists visit 
this region every summer. 

Lynn is famous for the manufacture of boots and 
shoes. The value of the boots and shoes made at Lynn 
each year is about equal to two-thirds of the annual 
output of all the gold mines in the United States. 


1 . 

St. Croix River. 

20. 

Boston. 

2. 

Passamaquoddy Bay. 

21. 

Massachusetts Bay. 

3. 

Eastport. 

22. 

Plymouth. 

4. 

Mt. Desert Island. 

23. 

Cape Cod Bay. 

5. 

Penobscot Bav and River. 24. 

Cape Cod. 

6. 

Bangor. 

25. 

Nantucket Island 

7. 

Kennebec River. 

26. 

Martha’s Vineyard. 

8. 

Augusta. 

27. 

Newport. 

9. 

Portland. 

28. 

Providence. 

10. 

Portsmouth. 

29. 

Connecticut River. 

11. 

Merrimac River. 

30. 

Hartford. 

12 . 

Lawrence. 

31. 

Springfield. 

13. 

Lowell. 

32. 

Mt. Holyoke. 

14. 

Nashua. 

33. 

Hoosac Tunnel. 

15. 

Manchester. 

34. 

Green Mountains 

16. 

Concord. 

35. 

Long Island Sound. 

17. 

The White Mountains. 

36. 

Long Island. 

18. 

Mt. Washington. 

37. 

New Haven. 

19. 

Lvnn. 




Boston is twice as 

large as 

Milwaukee and 


large as Chicago. In foreign commerce it ranks second 
in the United States. It is the metropolis of New Eng¬ 
land, has one of the finest harbors in America and is a 
famous railroad center. It is ver} r irregularly laid out 
especially in the older portion, the streets being narrow 
and crooked. Let pupils turn to their histories and 
note the important events in the Revolutionary war 
which occurred near Boston. 

Plymouth is a little, old town of no present or 
prospective importance. Why, then, do we care to 
know where it is? Plymouth Rock is a boulder 
partly buried in the earth, only a few feet in diameter. 




NEW ENGLAND. 61 

It is nearly a quarter of a mile back from the seashore 
now; it was on this rock that “ The Pilgrims ” are sup¬ 


posed to have landed. It has not been moved; what 









62 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


then is true of the shore at this point ? Mrs. Hemans 
speaks of the Pilgrims landing on “a stern and rock- 
bound coast,” but the shore is low and sandy for miles 
on either side of Plymouth. Not far from here are 
some fine cranberry marshes. 

Turn to Longfellow’s Miles Standish and see what 
he calls Plymouth Rock. 

Cape Cod is a big sand bar or projection of sand 
hills extending out almost in a semicircle. Was it 
named on account of the fish, or do codfish take their 
name from this cape ? 

Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard are noted 
summer resorts. The latter formerly belonged to New 
York. Nantucket used to be a great center from which 
whale ships went out. [In review, the subject of arti¬ 
ficial light is a good topic for pupils to write upon: tallow, 
whale oil, kerosene and electricity are the subtopics.] 

Newport was formerly one of the capitals of Rhode 
Island. It is now noted chiefly as a summer resort for 
millionaires. 

Providence is noted for the manufacture of fine jew¬ 
elry; it is the capital and metropolis of Rhode Island. 
Why is Providence so called ? 

The Connecticut River is of small value for com¬ 
merce, but furnishes water power for many factories. 
Note that in ascending this river we enter a narrow val¬ 
ley shut in by mountains on all sides, with no outlet to 
any other region of great importance. This fact and 
the fact that at its mouth there is no good harbor are 
very significant, and will be referred to later when we 
compare this river with the Hudson. 


NEW ENGLAND. 


63 


Hartford , the capital of Connecticut, has large fac¬ 
tories; this city and Springfield, Massachusetts, manu¬ 
facture most of the firearms that are made in this 
country. It is also famous for the making of watches. 

SpringGeld has an arsenal in which half a million 
stand of arms can be stored. What is the difference be¬ 
tween an arsenal and an armory ? 

Mt. Holyoke is the most prominent peak in Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

The Hoosac Tunnel is a famous one, five miles long 
and cut through the solid rock of the Green Mountains. 
It required eighteen years to make it, and cost eighteen 
million dollars. Commercially it did for Massachusetts 
what the Erie Canal did for New York—opened a direct 
gateway to the great West. 

The Green Mountains are an unbroken chain with 
flat tops running through the entire length of Vermont. 

New Haven has a good harbor, and is the seat of 
Yale University. 

Long Island Sound has picturesque shores. Smaller 
vessels from New York to New England ports navigate 
the sound, but the large ocean steamers keep in the open 
sea to the south of it. 

Long Island is shaped somewhat like a fish, with the 
head to the west. It contains some valuable fishing 
places, and in the eastern part there is still some wild 
game. The southern shore is swampy, and large tracts 
of the island are waste land. It is a part of New York 
State. 

Let the class draw an outline sketch of New England, 
putting in the other boundaries as well as the coast line 


64 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS 


and the places above noted. Review the sketch map 
frequently and have the pupils make it from memory, 
practicing until they can do the work neatly and with 
a fair degree of correctness. 

Observe that the straight boundary of Maine on the 
east is about equal to that on the northwest, and that 
the straight boundary on the west is the longest; that 
the shore is very jagged ; that the cities are all south of 
the parallel of 45°, or in the southern third of the state, 
and that there are many small lakes in the northern 
part; that the extreme length of New Hampshire is 
just twice its width; that north of the White Mountains 
the state becomes very narrow; that its eighteen miles 
of sea shore is the eastern limit of a projection reaching 
out toward the east. Observe that up to the big bend 
of the Merrimac just above Lowell, the boundary runs 
parallel with the river and about three miles from it. 
Why the river was not made the boundary is easily un¬ 
derstood when we remember that Massachusetts having 
been settled first had the prior claim to the river. Why 
were rivers more important in the early days than now ? 

Lake Champlain is a little more than half of the 
western boundary of New Hampshire. The western 
boundary of Massachusetts is not a north and south 
line. Connecticut is much wider at the west than at 
the east end and is only about half as long as Massa¬ 
chusetts. 

A few salient facts like the foregoing should be pointed out in ad¬ 
vance of the map drawing exercise. 

History and geography should be correlated in teaching. Spend 
a few days on the important historic facts connected with some of the 
famous places in New England. 

Maine is called “The Pine Tree State” and New 


NEW YORK CITY AND VICINITY. 


65 


Hampshire the “Granite State.” These names give a 
suggestion of some of the great products. In Maine the 
building of ships is an important industry; fishing is 
followed by many people along the coast; lumbering is 
carried on in the north, while in the level strip running 
parallel with the shore in the southern part' there is con¬ 
siderable farming land. The coast of Maine has more 
good harbors than the whole coast from Chesapeake 
Bay to the Rio Grande. 

II. 

NEW YORK CITY AND VICINITY. 

In presenting this topic the teacher should draw on the board the 
outline sketch on a very large scale, marking the places indicated by 
the first eleven numbers; when these are learned and the pupils are 
able to make the sketch from memory, the details mav be filled in as 
indicated by the numbers above eleven in the list. 

Manhattan Island is about 15 miles long and two 
miles wide. It is probably now the most valuable 
island of its size in the world, but the whole island was 
once bought for $24. This island together with Long 
Island and Staten Island partly surround a body of 
water which is one of the finest natural harbors in the 
world. Long Island Sound being wide in the eastern 
part and narrowing towards the west, catches so much 
of the tidal wave which sweeps westward across the 
ocean twice a day, that the wave when it reaches the 
narrow outlet of the west end of the sound (Hell 
Gate) is considerably higher than the main portion of 
the wave when it strikes the mouth of the lower harbor 
between Sandy Hook and Coney Island. Consequently 
a strong current rushes through Hell Gate and down 
East River. This current scours the harbor and keeps 


66 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


1 . 

2 . 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6 . 

7. 

8 . 
9. 

10 . 

11 . 

12 . 

13. 

14. 



Manhattan Island 
Long Island 
Staten Island 
New York Harbor 
Lower Harbor 
Newark Bay 
East River 
Hudson River 
Hell Gate 
Harlem River 
Long Island Sound 
Central Park 
Broadway 
Wall Street 


15. Castle Garden 

16. Brooklyn Bridge 

17. Brooklyn 

18. Governor’s Island 

19. Bedloe’s Island 

20 . Jersey City 

21 . Hoboken 

22. Newark 

23. Patterson 
24 1 

2 5 ' jQuarantine Islands 

26. Sandy Hook 

27. Coney Island 

28. Jamaica Bay 




NEW YORK CITY AND VICINITY. 


67 


it clean without dredging. Were it not for this fortu¬ 
nate arrangement of the co ast lines and channels, the silt 
from the Hudson River would long ages ago have 
choked up the harbor. 

The City of New York occupies the whole of Man¬ 
hattan Island and some of the main land east of the 
Harlem River. It is the largest city in the Western 
Hemisphere, and next to London, is the most important 
business center in the world. It has had a wonderful 
growth. At the time of the Revolution it was inferior 
to Philadelphia and Boston, and had only about 
22,000 population. It has increased about a hundred 
fold since then. Some of the causes of this growth, be¬ 
sides the fact that it has such an excellent harbor, we 
shall discover as we proceed with these lessons. 

Greater New York includes Brooklyn, Staten Is¬ 
land and the portion of Long Island and the mainland 
east of the Harlem shown in the sketch. Draw a line 
through Hudson river and around west of Staten 
Island, thus leaving on the left all the sketch that lies in 
New Jersey, and all the rest of the sketch represents 
Greater New York, now organized under one city gov¬ 
ernment, and containing about 3,000,000 inhabitants 
—the second largest city in the world. 

Central Park is one of the finest in the world, two 
and a half miles long and half a mile wide. It was 
original^ a piece of ground so rough with bare rocks 
alternating with swamps that it was impossible to 
make it into city lots. Read the description of it in the 
c\ r clopedia. 

Broadway is the principal street of the city. Wall 


68 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Street is on the line occupied in olden times by a wall 
for defense when the city was all on the part of the 
island south of that line. It is now famous as the place 
where the greatest business in stocks and banking in 
this country is conducted. 

Castle Garden is the place where more than half the 
immigrants who have come to the United Stated have 
landed. The immigrants are now landed at Ellis Island, 
north of Bedloe’s Island. 

Brooklyn Bridge is a mile long and is the largest 
suspension bridge in the world; high masted vessels 
pass under it; one may stand on the bridge and look 
down on the tops of high buildings. It is crowded 
every day, and yet most of the traffic between the two 
cities is carried on by ferrjy boats. 

Show a picture of the bridge and have pupils realize the fact that 
it is actually a “swinging” bridge, hanging on ropes—“cables”— 
passed over immense pillars at either end and tied to an anchorage 
sunk in the earth beyond the pillars. 

Brooklyn is sometimes called the city of churches; 
al&o the sleeping place for New York because many 
people live in Brookfyn and do business in New York. 

On Governor's Island are some forts; there are 
others on either side of The Narrows, the entrance to 
the harbor, just east of Staten Island. But these forts 
are old-fashioned and would be practicality worthless 
as a defense against modern war vessels. 

On Bedloe’s Island is the statue of Liberty Enlight¬ 
ening the* World, by Bartholdi, a French artist, pre¬ 
sented to'the United States by citizens of France. In the 
hand of the statue is a, torch of electric lights which 
lights up the harbor. 


NEW YORK CITY AND VICINITY. 


69 


Hoboken was formerly famous as a place where 
duels were fought. It was near here that Alexander 
Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr. 

Newark and Patterson on the Passaic River are 
important cities; the latter is noted for the making of 
locomotives. 

Quarantine Islands are artificial islands at which 
the health department examines all ships coming into 
the harbor. 

Coney Inland is a fashionable summer resort. 

The water supply of New York city is obtained 
from the Croton River, a small stream which flows into 
the Hudson fort}" miles north of the city. The immense 
aqueduct is one of the most famous works of the kind 
in the world and cost $20,000,000. The old aqueduct 
crossed the Harlem River on arches of masonry, but the 
present one extends under the river. 

Hell Gate , the rocky and formerly dangerous pas¬ 
sage between East River and Long Island Sound 
was cleared of rocks a few years ago by tunneling 
under it and making a great blast with dynamite. 
Electric wires were connected with the dynamite in the 
tunnel and led to the superintending engineer’s office; 
when even-thing was ready a ^ttle girl two years old 
was told to push the button connecting the poles, and 
the rocky bottom of the channel was thrown out of the 
water with an explosion like an earthquake. Small 
vessels bound for New England ports go through Hell 
Gate, but the ocean liners go through The Narrows. 

The great importance of this city will justify spending several 
days in studying it. Let the pupils select ten states whose combined 
population does not exceed that of New York City. It has more 


70 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


people than the state of Michigan ox Wisconsin, and is of greater 
importance to the business interests of the world than both those 
states. 

Chuck Purdy is a good book to read in connection with this 
lesson. 

III. 

THE HUDSON AND THE DELAWARE. 

The Hudson is famous for the beauty of its scenery, 
and it is also a stream of great commercial importance. 
Comparing it.with the Connecticut, we note that they 
are about equal in size, and flow in the same direction, 
but in commercial importance they differ greatly. As¬ 
cending the Connecticut, the navigator finds himself in 
a narrow valley, hemmed in by mountains on either 
hand, from which there is no escape, except by climbing 
or turning back. But the Hudson has a great arm at 
right angles to its main course, reaching out toward 
the west in a level and in parts a somewhat swampy 
plain, which connects with the plains of the Oswego 
and the Genesee, reaching to Lake Erie without any 
mountain barriers, thus making it one of the most im¬ 
portant doorways to the great West beyond the Ap¬ 
palachian mountain system. 

Northward also by a short portage now spanned by 
a canal to Lake George, the Hudson valley opens into the 
St. Lawrence through Cake Champlain and the Sorrel. 
These facts, added to the advantage of a first-class har¬ 
bor at its mouth, made it a matter of natural destiny 
that the great metropolis should develop at the mouth 
of the Hudson, rather than the Connecticut. 

Sing Sing has a famous penitentiary. 

The Croton River is the source of New York City’s 
water supply. 


THE HUDSON AND THE DELAWARE. 


71 



1. Sing Sing. 

2. Croton River. 

3. West Point. 

4. Poughkeepsie. 

5. Catskill Mountains. 

6. Albany. 

7. Troy. 

8. Erie Canal. 

1). Mohawk River. 

10. Adirondack Mountains. 

11. Long Branch. 

12. Atlantic City. 

13. Cape May. 

14. Cape Henlopen. 

15. Delaware Bay. 

16. Dover. 

17. Brandywine Creek. 

18. Wilmington. 

19. Schuylkill River. 

20. Camden. 

21. Philadelphia. 

22. Trenton. 

23. Princeton. 

24. Lehigh River. 

25. Delaware Water Gap. 

Wes£ Point is the seat of 
the United States Military 
Academy. 

Poughkeepsie is the seat 
of Vassar College. 

The Catskill Mountains 
are a group somewhat iso¬ 
lated from the system of 
which they are a part. 
They are very rugged, and 
being so near to large cities, 
are much frequented by sum¬ 
mer tourists. Read the story 
of Rip Van Winkle. 




72 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Albany , the capital, is at the head of tide water, 
which means that twice a day the Hudson runs north¬ 
ward to this point, the water being pushed up by the 
rising tide. 

Suppose we should mark the point to which the 
tide ascends in every river flowing into the ocean. Now 
think of a line drawn through all these points. Let us 
call the strip of land between this line and the sea¬ 
shore, the tide water region. Why is it not of uniform 
width ? Where will the tide water region be the nar¬ 
rowest ? Where widest ? 

Albany is the oldest town in the thirteen original 
states, Jamestown having passed out of existence. It 
was settled in 1614, is now half as large as Milwaukee, 
and has the finest capitol in this country except the 
one at Washington; the capitol at Albany cost 
$ 12 , 000 , 000 . 

Troy is a large city six miles from Albany, and is 
first among American cities in the manufacture of shirts 
and collars. 

The Erie Canal is the most important in this coun¬ 
try; it joins Lake Erie and the Hudson. 

The Adirondack Mountains are by far the wildest 
part of New York. The}^ are densely wooded, and 
abound in game. 

Long Branch y Atlantic City , and Cape May are 
famous summer resorts on the low, sandy shore of New 
Jersey. 

Dover is the capital, and Wilmington the metro¬ 
polis of Delaware. The latter is on Brandywine Creek. 

Philadelphia , between the Schuylkill and the Dela- 


THE HUDSON AND THE DELAWARE. 73 

ware, is the third city in size in the United States, be¬ 
ing almost as large as Chicago. Its name means cit 3 ' 
of brotherly love; it is frequently called the Quaker 
City, and is sometimes known as the city of homes, be¬ 
cause so many of the working people there own their 
homes. In the percentage of inhabitants who own their 
homes, Philadelphia and Milwaukee are nearly equal, 
and are at the head of the list among all the great cities of 
the world. Philadelphia is the greatest manufacturing 
city in America. It is famous as the old capital of the 
United States. It has the largest city building in the 
world, finished in 1895, at a cost of $20,000,000. This is 
probably the finest, and certainly the highest building 
in the Western Hemisphere, not excepting the capitol 
at Washington, and ranks among the few great build¬ 
ings of the world; it covers four acres of ground space, 
has 520 rooms, and the dome is surmounted by a 
statue of William Penn, 36 feet tall, the top of which is 
573 feet high—18 feet higher than the Washington 
monument. Philadelphia is very regularly laid out, in 
this respect differing widely from Boston. 

Camden and Trenton are important cities; the 
latter, the capital of New Jersey, is noted for the mak¬ 
ing of potter}^. 

Princeton is the seat of a great college. 

The Lehigh is a river whose valley is famous for 
valuable coal mines. This region and northward to 
Scranton contains the greatest mines of anthracite, or 
hard coal, in the world. 

The Delaware Water Gap is a famous gorge where 
the river has cut through the mountain, leaving rocky 


74 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


walls 1000 feet high. The Delaware rises in the Cat- 
skill Mountains. How does it compare in commercial 
importance with the Hudson and the Connecticut ?. 

IV. 


THE CHESAPEAKE BASIN. 








THE CHESAPEAKE BASIN. 


1 . 

Cape Charles. 

21. Blue Ridge Mountains. 

2 , 

Cape Henry. 

22. Antietam Creek. 

3. 

Chesapeake Bay. 

23. Rappahannock River. 

4. 

Susquehanna River. 

24. Fredericksburg. 

5. 

Harrisburg. 

25. Chancellorsville. 

6. 

Scranton. 

26. Rapidan. 

7. 

Catskill Mountains. 

27. York River and Yorktown. 

8. 

Baltimore. 

28. Mattapony (Ma-Ta-Po-Ny). 

9. 

Annapolis. 

29. Pamunkev. 

10 . 

Potomac River. 

30. Fortress Monroe and Old 

11. 

Bull Run. 

Point Comfort. 

12 . 

Mt. Vernon. 

31. Hampton Roads. 

13. 

Washington City and 

32. Norfolk and Portsmouth. 

14. 

District of Columbia. 
Rock Creek. 

33. Dismal Swamp. 

34. Appomattox River. 

1 5. 

Frederick. 

35. Petersburg. 

16. 

Gettysburg. 

36. Appomattox Court House. 

17. 

Shenandoah River. 

37. Richmond. 

18. 

Harper’s Ferry. 

38. Charlottesville. 

19. 

Winchester. 

39. Natural Bridge. 

20. 

Lurav Caverns. 

Cape Charles and Cape Henry , on the north and on 


the south sides of the entrance to the Chesapeake, are 
both in Virginia. The Potomac and a line eastward from 
its mouth is the boundary between Maryland and Vir¬ 


ginia. 

TheCkesafeake Bay is by far the largest inlet on the 
Atlantic coast of the United States, and is deep enough 
for the largest vessels. All inlets on the Atlantic coast 
of North America, south of this bay, are shallow, north 
of it are deep. The name Chesapeake means “The 
Mother of Waters.” 

The east shore of the Chesapeake is uninteresting 
and has no cities, but the west shore receives many 
important rivers which flow through a country whose 
geography and history should be familiar to every stu¬ 
dent of United States history. 

The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania 
is the old “Mason and Dixon line.” 


76 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The Susquehanna River is shallow and has many 
rapids, consequently it is of little importance commer¬ 
cially. It has much wild and picturesque scenery. 

Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. 

Scranton is the most important city in the valley of 
the Susquehanna, and is in the center of the great hard 
* (anthracite) coal region. The Susquehanna rises near the 
source of the Delaware and its course is nearly parallel 
with that of the Delaware. 

Baltimore is the metropolis of the Chesapeake basin. 
It is the sixth city in size in the United States and the 
third in foreign commerce. It is called the “Monumental 
City” because of the many monuments which it contains. 
It is the seat of Johns Hopkins University. The popu¬ 
lation is about half a million. 

Annapolis is the capital of Mar}dand and seat of the 
United States Naval Academy. 

The Potomac River is the boundary between Mary- 
land and Virginia. Above Washington it is of little use 
for navigation. 

Bull Run , a little creek of no importance in itself, is 
famous in history as the scene of the first battle of the 
Civil War. 

Mt. Vernon was the home and is the burial place of 
Washington; it is on the Potomac eighteen miles below 
Washington. 

Washington City was laid out by President Wash¬ 
ington. The plan was copied from that of Paris; the 
streets and avenues radiate from the capitol building as 
a center. It was his expectation that the city would be 
built chiefly to the eastward of the capitol; but the real 


THE CHESAPEAKE BASIN. 


77 


estate dealers determined otherwise, and it has grown 
mostly toward the west and north on the low ground 
toward the river. This made it necessary to remodel 
the capitol building and convert what was formerly the 
back of it into a front. Washington laid the corner 
stone of the capitol building in 1793. It was destroyed 
with other public buildings when the city- was captured 
by the British in 1814. It was rebuilt, and extensive 
wings were built later making it until recently the finest 
building on this continent. It is now surpassed by the 
cit 3 r hall in Philadelphia. The capitol covers 3 Y 2 acres, 
the Philadelphia city hall 5 acres; the capitol is 287 
feet high, the hall is 537. 

The public buildings of Washington are numerous 
and massive. The most important are the Treasury 
building, the Patent office, the Smithsonian Institution, 
and the Congressional Library Building. For a good 
description of the Smithsonian Institution, see Popu¬ 
lar Science Monthly for Jan. 1896. 

The District of Columbia was at first ten miles 
square and was donated to the Federal government by 
Virginia and Maryland, but Congress gave back to Vir¬ 
ginia the part she had ceded. The District is governed 
directly by Congress ; the people do not vote. The Fed¬ 
eral government pays half the expense of the city govern¬ 
ment ; the inhabitants of the District pay the other half. 

Rock Creek , Frederick , and Gettysburg are of his¬ 
toric interest; Harper's Ferry is a little town at the 
grandh r rugged water gap where the Potomac reinforced 
by the Shenandoah has cut its way through the solid 
rock of the Blue Ridge. It is celebrated as the scene of 


78 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


John Brown’s raid in 1859, and for the surrender of a 
Union force of 11,000 men to Stonewall Jackson in 1862. 

The Shenandoah is the most historic valley in this 
country with the possible exception of the double valley 
of the Hudson and Lake Champlain. 

Winchester. Read “Sheridan’s Ride.” 

TheLuray Caverns are more beautiful but much less 
extensive than the famous Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. 
The formations are strikingly peculiar in form, and for 
the most part are pure white. In summer several excur¬ 
sion trains each week run from Washington and Balti¬ 
more to take visitors to these wonderful caverns. They 
were discovered accidentally in 1878 by two boys who 
were hunting rabbits. 

Antietam Creek was the scene of one of the severest 
battles of the Civil war. 

At Fredericksburg Lee defeated Burnside. 

The York River is only a short estuary or arm of the 
Chesapeake. 

Yorktown is of no importance except historically. 
It was besieged in the Revolutionary War and in the 
Civil War. 

The Mat , the Ta, the Po, and the Ny form the Mat - 
tapony ; the peculiar naming of these rivers is the only 
interest that attaches to them. 

Fortress Monroe , on Old Point Comfort is the largest 
fort in the United States; it cost about $3,000,000 and 
covers 80 acres of ground. It was built to protect 
Hampton Roads and Norfolk. 

• In Hampton Roads, an arm of the Chesapeake, at the 
mouth of the James occurred on March 9,1862, the first 
battle that ever was fought between iron ships. This 


THE CHESAPEAKE BASIN. 


79 


battle resulted in a complete change of naval warfare, 
and all the navies of the world had to be rebuilt. Read 
Longfellow’s poem, The Cumberland. 

Norfolk is an important commercial port, and at 
Portsmouth is a United States navy yard. 

Norfolk is the commercial center of the peanut busi¬ 
ness, being the only great peanut market in the world. 
The value of this crop harvested in the region tributary 
to Norfolk amounts to about $8,000,000 annually. 

The site of Jamestown is interesting historically, but 
there has been no town there for more than 200 years ; 
a ruined church tower is all that remains of the old 
town. 

Petersburg on the Appomattox River was the scene 
of some ver} r hard fighting just before the capture of 
Richmond. 

Appomattox Court House is where Lee surrendered 
to Grant in 1865. 

Richmond is a beautiful chw at the head of tide 
water on the James. It was the capital of the Southern 
Confederacy, and the earthworks which were thrown 
up to defend it are still very prominent objects of inter¬ 
est to the visitor. The city has more than doubled in 
population since the war. 

Charlottesville is the seat of the University of Vir¬ 
ginia, the oldest state university in this country. 

The Natural Bridge is one of the great wonders of 
America; it is 215 feet high and 100 feet wide, with a 
span of 80 feet and affords a convenient passage for a 
wagon road over a deep ravine. Trees and bushes grow 
on the top, so that a person may cross it and not be 


80 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


aware of the fact. This bridge is visited every year by 
many tourists. 

SOME FACTS REGARDING THE REGION OF THE CHESAPEAKE. 

Delaware is the lowest state in the Union and is 
divided into three counties. John Randolph once said 
that the Delaware senators represented three counties 
at low tide and one county at high tide. 

The Chesapeake basin produces more oysters than 
any other equal area of the earth’s surface. This is also 
a famous region for fruit; the shipping and canning of 
fruit and oysters constitute a large industry at Balti¬ 
more. The finest canvas-back ducks are numerous in 
the swamps around the Chesapeake; they feed on wild 
celery which gives the meat a fine flavor. 

The mouths of the Chesapeake rivers are wide estu¬ 
aries. The tide water region is wide. (See page 72.) 

Many Virginia county seats have the letters C. H. 
(Court House) written after them. This is a mark of 
the old times when in many cases there was no town 
at the county seat, the whole region being devoted to 
agriculture, each large plantation producing nearly 
everything necessary to the simple mode of living in the 
early days. 

The Chesapeake Basin will furnish matter for several 
lessons. A region so rich in historical associations 
should receive considerable attention. History, litera¬ 
ture and geography may here be combined with profit. 
The story of the bombardment of Fort McHenry near 
Baltimore, and the writing of the Star Spangled Banner 
hy Francis Key will excite the enthusiasm of a class if 
well presented. Let them read and sing the Star Span- 


SOUTHERN STATES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 


81 


gled Banner. In connection with the work on the Shen¬ 
andoah use Sheridan’s Ride. When the boys are intoxi¬ 
cated with the account of the great naval battle in 
Hampton Roads have them read Longfellow’s The 
Cumberland. Even Whittier’s fanciful fiction Barbara 
Frietchie, though probably destitute of any basis of his¬ 
toric fact, is worth reading in connection with the lesson 
on the Potomac. Harper’s Ferry suggests the singing 
of “John Brown’s Body.’’ 

But much of this is not geography? True; but the critic who 
makes this objection is probably the same one who says that these 
tracing and sketching lessons emphasize the dots and lines unduly 
and do not give enough prominence to the “mental pictures.” the 
imagination, the emotions. If you have found thus far that the les¬ 
sons interest the pupils and that they are gaining definiteness in 
what was before a hazy subject you will not be disturbed by the 
ponderous philosophical critics; the}' never taught real children 
anyway. 

V. 

SOUTHERN STATES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

The coast of the Southern States is low and sandy. 
About halfway between the seashore and the Alle¬ 
ghany Mountains is a terrace or chain of hills running 
parallel to the mountains and the coast. Northwest of 
this the surface is a somewhat hilly plateau. The ter¬ 
race makes rapids in the rivers which furnish consider¬ 
able water power; but eastward from the terrace the 
course of the rivers is very sluggish. 

Albermarle and Pamlico Sounds are large bodies of 
shallow water shut off from the deep ocean b}' long, 
narrow sand islands. 

Tar River is suggestive of one of the products of the 
pine forests of North Carolina. Teach something of 


82 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 



the uses of tar, pitch, turpentine and rosin, and show 
specimens to the class. Calking, roofing paper, paint, 


SOUTHERN STATES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 


















SOUTHERN STATES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 


83 


varnish, sealing wax, shoemaker’s wax, etc., should be 
mentioned. The products of pitch pine forests are 
called naval stores. 

1. Albermarle Sound. 

2. Pamlico Sound. 

3. Tar River. 

4. Cape Hatteras. 

5. Raleigh. 

6. Cape Fear. 

7. Wilmington. 

8. Santee River. 

9. Columbia. 

TO. Fort Sumter. 

11. Charleston. 

12. Savannah. 

T3. Savannah River. 

T4. St. John’s River. 

T5. Jacksonville. 

16. St. Augustine. 

17. The Everglades. 

Cape Hatteras is a rough and dangerous point 
where many shipwrecks occur. 

Raleigh the capital is on the Nueses. 

Cape Fear is a name which suggests the dangerous 
character of the coast at this point. 

Wilmington has a large trade in naval stores and 
is the largest city in North Carolina. 

On a branch of the Santee is Columbia , the capital 
of South Carolina. One of its head waters rises near 
Mount Mitchell (Blue Dome) the highest point of land 
east of the Mississippi River. 

Fort Sumter is a famous historical ruin on an 
island at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, the 
metropolis of the South Atlantic States. Charleston 
harbor is one of the safest on the Atlantic; the city is 
about one-fourth as large as Milwaukee. 

Savannah is somewhat smaller than Charleston 


18. Florida Keys. 

1 9. Florida Strait. 

20. Key West. 

21. Tampa Bay. 

22. Tallahassee. 

23. Appalachacola River. 

24. Atlanta. 

25. Pensacola Bay. 

26. Mobile Bay. 

27. Mobile 

28. Alabama River. 

29. Montgomery. 

30. Birmingham. 

31. Pearl River. 

32. Jackson. 

33. Lake Pontchartrain. 


84 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


and is on the Savannah River, the boundary between 
South Carolina and Georgia. 

St. John's River is a chain of small lakes, with a 
very slow current; a peculiarity of it is the fact that 
it flows throughout its whole course nearly parallel 
to the coast and very near to it. 

Jacksonville is noted as a winter resort. 

St. Augustine is, with perhaps one exception, the 
oldest town in the United States. It has some of the 
finest hotels in the world. 

The Everglades are extensive swamps in southern 
Florida. 

Florida Keys are a chain of islands of coral forma¬ 
tion extending out into 

Florida Strait. This is a region in which many 
shipwrecks occur. 

Key West is an important city, the metropolis of 
Florida, on a coral island sixty miles from the main 
land. Sponge fishing, the manufacture of cigars and 
“wrecking” are the chief industries. About a fourth 
of the inhabitants make a livelihood by wrecking, that 
is, rescuing vessels which are wrecked on the reefs. 
These reefs are very dangerous to navigation. 

Tampa Bay is where DeSoto landed in 1539 with 
the exploring party which two years later discovered 
the Mississippi. Some of the herd of 300 hogs which 
he brought with him escaped, and their descendants 
are still found in the swampy forests of southern Flori¬ 
da ; they are wild and fierce. 

Tallahassee, the capital of Florida is an unimpor¬ 
tant inland town. 


THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN AS A WHOLE. 


85 


On a branch of the Appalachacola (the Chatahoo- 
chee) is Atlanta , the capital and metropolis of Georgia, 
a fine manufacturing city. A factory in Atlanta which 
was used during the war for the making of swords and 
bayonets, afterwards became a plow factory. 

Mobile Bav is famous for the naval battle fought 
there in the Civil War. At Mobile there are extensive 
manufactoiies. Chewing gum and cotton seed oil are 
made in large quantities.* 

On the Alabama River are Montgomery , the capital, 
and Birmingham , a new city of rapid growth, where 
much iron is mined and manufactured. 

We may reach New Orleans by way of hake Pont- 
chartrain , but the usual route is by way of the Missis¬ 
sippi river. 

The Atlantic shore of the Southern States produces 
much rice, and the islands along the shore produce a 
very superior variety of cotton known as sea-island 
cotton; it has an unusually long fiber and is used in 
making the best kinds of sewing thread. The climate 
of these islands is unhealthful, and white men cannot 
live upon them with safet\ r . 

VI. 

THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN AS A WHOLE. 

Let the pupil start at Lake Pontchartrain and go 
to the west bank of the Mississippi without crossing any 
natural water course. His route will be north and then 

*Tbe annual expenditure for chewing gum in the United States is about 
$27,000 000. over five times the amount spent for schoolbooks. The so called olive 
oil used in this country is mostly made from cotton seed. Nearly all the‘’lard” 
of commerce is composed in part of cotton seed-oil. So also is much of the “butter” 
of commerce. The annual product of cotton seed oil in the United States is worth 
$200 000 000, and nine-tenths of it is used for food; since it is neither a drying nor a 
non-drying oil it cannot be used either for paints or for lubricating purposes. 


86 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


northeast through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Ten¬ 
nessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Alary- 
land, Pennsylvania and New York. Then westward 
through Penns 3 dvania, Ohio and Indiana; northward 
through Illinois and Wisconsin to Michigan ; westward 
through Wisconsin, Alinnesota, North Dakota and 
Canada; southeast through Alontana, National Park, 
Wyoming, Colorado, New Alexico, Texas and Louis- 
ianna. The shape of the basin is indicated here. 



The principal stream is indicated by a continuous 
line, and its chief tributaries are shown in dotted lines. 
The mistake which was made in naming the streams 
(giving one name—Mississippi—to the lower portion of 
the great river and one of its tributaries) should not 
prevent us from seeing the fact that the great river of 
this basin rises in the western part of Alontana and 
flows southeastward into the gulf, a distance of about 
4200 miles. This stream flows through about the 
middle of the area drained by it, and receives two large 
tributaries on each side, viz, the Red and the Arkansas 
on the west, and the Ohio and (Upper) Afississippi on 






THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN AS A WHOLE. 


87 


the east. The Kansas, Platte, James, Dakota and 
Yellowstone are smaller tributaries in its upper course. 

Should there be any lingering doubt as to the cor¬ 
rectness of this view—and there probably will be, for 
the force of names is very strong—the teacher may out¬ 
line each of the tributary basins. A line drawn south¬ 
ward from Cairo, Ill., through Tennessee and Mississippi 
and eastward through Alabama joining the boundai^ 
of the great basin in northern Alabama, and another 
northward from Cairo to Chicago will set off the Ohio 
basin. A line from Alton, Ill., to Chicago, and another 
from Alton to the southwest corner of Minnesota, 
thence north to the edge of the great basin defines the 
Upper Mississippi basin. Note what each contains: 

Ohio Basin. Upper Mississippi Basin. 

One-third of Illinois. One-half of Illinois. 

Most of Indiana. Two-thirds of Wisconsin, Iowa and • 

Three-quarters of Ohio. Minnesota. 

Nearly one-half of Pennsylvania. One-fifth of Missouri. 

A small part of New York, Mary- A small part of Michigan, 
land, Virginia, North Carolina, 

Georgia, Alabama, and Missis¬ 
sippi. 

Nearly all of West Virginia, Ken¬ 
tucky, and Tennessee. 

If it would be manifestly incorrect to apply the 
name Ohio to the river from Pittsburg to the Gulf, 
much more evident must it be that the small tributary 
from Lake Itasca to Alton is not to be regarded the 
main stream. 

In describing his journey around the rim of this 
great basin let the pupil note where his path is moun¬ 
tainous and where level; he should bear in mind always 
that he is on a water shed, the highest land in the 
vicinity. Note at what points three slopes meet, viz: 


88 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


In North Carolina. 
In Pennsylvania. 

In Minnesota. 


In Montana. 


In Colorado. 


f Mississippi. 

! Gulf. 

[ Atlantic. 

( Mississippi. 

{ Atlantic. 

( St Lawrence. 

( Mississippi. 

St Lawrence. 
Hudson’s Bay. 

( Mississippi. 

\ Hudson’s Bay. 
( Pacific. 

( Mississippi. 

Pacific. 

I Gulf. 


This basin is about half as large as Europe and 
constitutes the great core of North America. It is 
about 5,000 miles in circuit. It may be cut into pro¬ 
duction zones as follows: South of Arkansas is the 
• sugar region. The parallel of 36° 30', the north line of 
Arkansas, defines the limit of the cotton crop. All the 
region north of this has a variety of products, chiefly 
live stock and cereals. In the eastern extremity is the 
greatest petroleum region of the world. In the south¬ 
eastern part is iron; in the northern, iron and lumber; 
in the western, gold and silver. 

It is estimated that this river carries into the gulf 
each year a quantity of earth equal to a mile square 
and 263 feet deep. The effect of this is seen by a glance 
at the map which shows the mouth projecting far into 
the gulf. 

Read that part of Longfellow’s Evangeline which 
describes the journey of the Acadians down the Ohio, 
the Mississippi and the Atchafala 3 r a rivers, and note 
especially the description of scene^. The Atchafalaya 


THE RED AND THE ARKANSAS. 


89 


is a bayou which leaves the main stream at the mouth 
of the Red River and takes a short cut southward to 
the gulf. 

In the lower 1600 miles of its course the river bed 
is higher than the surrounding land. The water is held 
in by embankments called levees. For some distance 
below the mouth of the Ohio the river is nearly a mile 
wide, but at New Orleans, it is less than half a mile 
wide. This diminution is not due to evaporation and 
the absence of tributaries as in the Nile, but is due to a 
deepening of the channel in the lower course. 

Place a } T ardstick on the table in a perfectly level 
position; now place a sheet of common writing paper 
under one end of it and you will have a slope greater 
than that of the river from St. Paul to the gulf. 

Find the meaning of the terms jetties, bayou, la¬ 
goon, levee, crevasse. Find how and at what time 
each part ol this basin came into possession of the 
United States. The next lesson will take up the tracing 
of this basin in detail. Read from books in your library 
about New Orleans, the Red River Raft, the Mammoth 
Cave, the oil region of Pennsylvania, and Yellowstone 
Park. 

If you do not have a cyclopedia try to have enough of the school 
library i’und set aside to buy a serviceable one. The expense is not 
great. 

VII. 

THE RED AND THE ARKANSAS. 

The Jetties are artificial banks on either side of one 
of the mouths of the Mississippi, constructed partly of 
wicker work weighted with rocks and earth to confine 


90 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


the water to one mouth so as to wash the sediment out 
and keep a clear channel for vessels. They were planned 
by Captain Eads and built by the government of the 
United States. 



1 . 

The Jetties. 

9. 

Arkansas River. 

2. 

New Orleans. 

10. 

Little Rock. 

8. 

Baton Rouge. 

11. 

Hot Springs. 

4. 

Red River. 

12. 

Wichita. 

5. 

Shreveport. 

13. 

Pike’s Peak. 

6. 

Great Baft. 

14. 

Memphis. 

7. 

8. 

Llano Estacado. 
Vicksburg. 

15. 

Cairo. 


New Orleans is called the Crescent City because it 
was built around a curve of the river in the form of a 
new moon. It has grown around another curve so that 
now it is shaped somewhat like the letters. It is about 
the size of Milwaukee. Less than one-fiftli of the inhab¬ 
itants are of American or English descent. New Orleans 
is the largest cotton market in the world, and is second 
in the United States in the extent of its export trade. 
The fact that the city is built on ground from two to 
six feet below the surface of the river gives rise to some 
conditions of life which are peculiar. There are no sew- 


THE RED AND THE ARKANSAS. 


91 


ers ; the drainage is through open gutters on the street; 
these lead to a basin from which the sewage is' pumped 
into Lake Pontchartrain. Cellars and basements are 
unknown. The earth a few inches below the surface is 
saturated with water so that a hole dug in the ground 
soon fills with water. Consequently in the cemeteries 
are vaults built above grottnd, instead of graves. 

Let the class now learn or review the historic facts 
that are associated with New Orleans in the War of 
1812 and the Civil War. 

Baton Rouge , the capital, is so called from an im¬ 
mense red C 3 r press tree which was there when the place 
was first settled. It was straight, free from limbs ex¬ 
cept at the top, and of a reddish color. Some one play¬ 
fully suggested that it would make a fine walking cane. 
Baton Rouge is the French for red staff. 

The Red River is so called from the red mud which 
it washes down into the Mississippi. It is navigable as 
far as Shreveport, but above that point is the famous 
“Red River Raft,” a mass of driftwood which chokes 
the river channel for miles and which grows by accumu¬ 
lation from above as fast as it becomes loosened and 
floats away from below. Considerable money and effort 
have been expended to cut a channel through it, but it 
still offers an obstruction to navigation. The Red River 
is the southern boundary of the Indian Territory (more 
properly Indian Nation) and rises on the eastern edge 
of the 

Llano Estacado. (See page 104.) 

Vicksburg is a small city, not very important com- 


92 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


merciallv ; it is famous chiefly for its importance in the 
Civil War. 

The Arkansas is the longest tributary of the Missis¬ 
sippi but it is not an important river commercially. 

Little Rock (named from a peculiar rock in theriver) 
is the capital and metropolis of Arkansas; a few miles 
away is 

Hot Springs , famous as a winter resort. 

Wichita is one of the largest cities of Kansas. 

Pike's Peak is nearly three miles high. A railroad 
extends to the top. The ascent is made by many tour¬ 
ists every summer. 

Memphis is a flourishing city about a fourth as large 
as New Orleans. In 1878 and 1879 about a fifth of the 
population died of yellow fever. An improved system 
of sewerage was put in, and it is now said to be one of 
the most healthful cities in the United States. This is 
the lowest point at which the Mississippi is bridged. 

Cairo , at the mouth of the Ohio, has not developed 
the commercial importance which its position led many 
people to expect. Had rivers remained the great high¬ 
ways of commerce Cairo would have been a large city; 
but in the last thirty years inland commerce has been 
carried on mostly by rail. This city was an important 
depot of supplies in the Civil War. Why? The map 
suggests why. 

VIII. 

THE OHIO BASIN. 

This is the largest and most important of the val¬ 
leys tributary to the Mississippi. It is of great historic 
and commercial interest. A dispute as to its possession 


THE OHIO BASIN. 


93 


gave rise to the French and Indian War—a war which 
involved some momentous issues. That the English 
language, the Anglo-Saxon form of civilization, Prot¬ 
estantism, the principles of Magna Charta, and the 
English common law should prevail in North America 
was determined by the outcome of that war in 1763. 



l. 

Cairo. 

15. 

Louisville. 

2. 

Tennessee River. 

16. 

Kentucky River. 

3 . 

Fort Henry. 

17. 

Frankfort. 

4. 

Shiloh. 

18. 

Cincinnati. 

5. 

Chattanooga. 

19. 

Scioto River. 

6. 

Cumberland River. 

20. 

Columbus. 

7. 

Fort Donelson. 

21. 

Kanawha River. 

8. 

Nashville. 

22. 

Charleston. 

9. 

Wabash River. 

23. 

Wheeling. 

10. 

White River. 

24. 

Pittsburg (Fort Duquesne.) 

11. 

Indianapolis. 

25. 

Monongahela River. 

12. 

Terre Haute. 

26. 

Alleghany River. 

13. 

Green River. 

27. 

Oil City. 

14. 

Mammoth Cave. 

28. 

Chautauqua Lake. 








94 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The Ohio formed the great route through which 
emigration moved when it began to spread westward 
beyond the Alleghany mountains, and later it became 
the boundary between the free and the slave portions 
of the West. 

Remembering that Tennessee joined the confederacy 
but Kentucky was neutral, can you discover from the 
map why forts Henry and Donelson were built ? 

Chattanooga has developed great commercial im¬ 
portance since the war. Read about the battles of 
Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain. 

Nashville is one of the finest cities in the South and 
is noted as an educational center. 

The Wabash river is not of much importance for 
navigation. Its valley is very fertile. So also is the 
valley of the White. 

Indianapolis is one of the largest inland cities in the 
United States.* It is one of the greatest railroad 
centers of the country, having fifteen lines. 

Terre Haute is a beautiful little city on the Wabash. 
The name means “high land.” It is only relativelv high, 
the lower part of the Wabash valley being very low. 

Mammoth Cave is the largest known cavern. It 
has been explored a distance of ten miles from its mouth ; 
in some places the hight of the chambers is from 100 to 
300 feet. It contains a river in which are fishes with¬ 
out eyes. 

Louisville is the largest city south of the Ohio River 


* Inland here means not situated on navigable water. Denver is the onlv other 
iars:e inland city in this country. Let pupils find, if they can, other inland cities in 
any country as large as these. Why are most cities near navigable water? 


THE OHIO BASIN. 


95 


except New Orleans. It is the largest leaf tobacco 
market in the world. 

Cincinnati , called the “Queen City,” is the metrop¬ 
olis of the Ohio Valley, and is noted for the beauty of 
its suburbs. It is somewhat larger than Milwaukee. 
It was named in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati.* 

Columbus is another great railroad center. It has 
been claimed that for fine and costly public buildings 
no city in the United States, except Washington, sur¬ 
passes Columbus; but since the building of the city hall 
in Philadelphia it is probably third in this respect. 

Wheeling is a manufacturing city and produces 
much glass and pottery\ 

Pittsburg is almost as large as Milwaukee. It used 
to be called the Smoky City, but since 1883 it has had 
a clearer atmosphere on account of the discovery of 
natural gas, which is now used for fuel both in the 
homes and the factories. It is famous for the produc¬ 
tion of coal, iron and glass, and has the greatest cork 
factory in the world. Everything made of iron is pro¬ 
duced here, from a carpet tack to a fifty-eight-ton gun. 
Read about Fort Duquesne and Bradclock’s defeat. 

Oil City , as its name indicates, is in the great oil 
region. This is the greatest petroleum field in the world; 
30,000,000 barrels is the annual production. This indus¬ 
try employes as many men as the coal mining and iron 
trade in the United States. Read up on the subject and 

♦Read the story of Cincinnatus in Roman history. The revolutionary soldiers 
having “left the plow” for the army and having again returned to peaceful pur¬ 
suits some of them formed a society known as the Cincinnati-a sort of G. A, R. of 
that time. But unlike the G. A. R., membership was restricted to commissioned 
officers and tbeiv descendants. Franklin and other public men disapproved of 
this undemocratic organization, believing that it might prove the nucleus of a 
hereditary aristocracy, and so they discouraged it. It soon died out. 


96 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


make it the special topic for at least two lessons. Here 
are some points: 

This oil region began to be developed in 1861. Wells bored into 
solid rock; some of them flow without pumping. When a well runs 
dry a large dynamite cartridge dropped to the bottom will start it 
again. Oil thick, dark colored, with disagreeable smell. Great refiner¬ 
ies in Philadelphia and Cleveland. Not carried to refineries on trains, 
but pumped through iron pipes. Total length of pipe-lines would more 
than encircle the earth. After the discovery of petroleum, whales 
increased greatly in numbers. Why? How did Edison lower the 
price of kerosene? Formerly great cities were not lighted; those 
who went out at night carried lanterns and went armed or with 
guards. Cheap light makes government of cities easier. What rela¬ 
tion does the University of Chicago have to kerosene? Who is John 
D. Rockefeller ? 

Chautauqua on a lake of the same name is a famous 
summer resort, noted for the annual assembly of the 
Literary and Scientific Circles founded by Dr. Vincent. 

IX. 

THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI BASIN. 

“The oldest town in Illinois,” Kaskaskia , is no 
longer a town; like old Jamestown it has disappeared. 

St. Louis is about one-third as large as Chicago, and 
is the largest city in the Mississippi basin. It manufac¬ 
tures more tobacco than any other city of the world. 
There are two bridges across the Mississippi here, the 
Eads and the Merchants’. The Eads is one of the fa¬ 
mous bridges of the world, and was built by Captain 
Eads, the engineer who built the jetties at the mouth of 
the river. This city produces more flour than any other 
in America except one. St. Louis grew because of its 
river trade; note its position near the junction of three 
rivers. In 1896, a cyclone destroyed a large part of 
the city and partially wrecked the great bridge. 


THE UTFER MISSISSIPPI BASIN. 


97 


' 


The Missouri River is really the main stream, the 
so-called Upper Mississippi being a tributary. 


. 


1. Kaskaskia River. 

2. St. Louis. 

3. Missouri River. 

! 4. Illinois River. 

5. Sangamon River. 

6. Springfield. 

7. Peoria. 

8. Joliet. 

9. Aurora. 

10. Waukesha. 

11. Quincy. 

12. Des Moines River. 

13. Des Moines. 

14. Rock Island. 

15. Rock River. 

16. Rockford. 

17. Madison. 

18. Dubuque. 

1 9. Wisconsin River. 

20. The Dalles. 

21. LaCrosse. 

22. Winona. 

23. St. Croix River. 

24. St. Paul. 

25. Minnesota River. 

26. Minneapolis. 

27. Lake Itasca. 



The Illinois River in the days before the railroad 
era was of great importance commercially. It is con¬ 
nected by a canal with Lake Michigan. The new canal 
connecting these bodies of water is one of the great 
canals of the world, being considerably larger than 
the Suez Canal. It was built primarily for draining 
the city of Chicago. 





98 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Spring6eld , on the Sangamon , is the capital of Illi¬ 
nois, the old home and the burial place of Lincoln. 

Peoria is the greatest center for the manufacture of 
high-wines in the world. High-wine is a fluid made 
from corn and rye, and is the raw material out of which 
whisky is manufactured. 

Aurora is an important manufacturing and rail¬ 
road city. 

Waukesha is famous for its water which is supposed 
to have curative powers. Invalids in great numbers 
go there in summer. 

Quincy is a large and well built city, the third in 
size in Illinois. 

Des Moines is the capital and the metropolis of 
Iowa. 

At Rock Island is a United States armory and 
arsenal occupying a large island in the river. 

Rockford has great water power, and is an impor¬ 
tant manufacturing city. 

Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, the seat of the 
University of Wisconsin, is one of the most beautifully 
situated cities in the United States. 

Dubuque is the oldest city in Iowa and is the center 
of the old lead region of the Northwest. 

The Dalles of the Wisconsin are cliffs, islands and 
chasms worn in the soft sandstone by the erosion of the 
river, and present highly picturesque scenes. 

La Crosse , the second city of Wisconsin, is a great 
lumber market. 

Winona is the seat of one of the state normal 
schools of Minnesota. 


THE MISSOURI IIASIN. 


99 


St. Paul and Minneapolis , ten miles apart, have 
grown almost together. They are called the Twin 
Cities. The one is the capital, the other the metropolis 
of Minnesota. In the production of flour, Minneapolis 
is the leading city of the United States. 

Lake Itasca is the source of the Mississippi River. 

The Upper Mississippi is noted for beauty of scenery. 
Pine forests abound in the upper valleys of all its main 
tributaries above Dubuque; but most of the area of the 
Upper Mississippi basin is an agricultural region. 

In each state the teacher should apply the general method to the 
teaching of the state in detail. A dozen or more places in Wisconsin 
besides those above named should be noted by Wisconsin teachers in 
presenting this river and its tributaries. So with Iowa and Illinois 
points for teachers in those states. 


X. 

THE MISSOURI BASIN. 

The Missouri River is noted for the frequent changes 
of channel which the stream makes; it brings down 
much more sediment than the Upper Mississippi. The 
name is an Indian word for Big Muddy. 

St. Louis , (see page 96.) 

Jefferson City is a town of no consequence except as 
the capital of a great state, and a movement is now on 
foot to move the capital to 

Sedalia, a beautiful and flourishing inland city about 
forty miles farther westward. 

Kansas City, in the extreme western part of Missouri, 
has had a remarkably rapid growth; a suburb by the 
same name over the line in Kansas is also growing rap- 


100 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


idly. The combined population is about 200,000. Kan¬ 
sas City is built on steep hills or bluffs overlooking the 
river. 



1 . 

St. Louis. 

11. 

South Fork of Platte. 

2. 

Jefferson City. 

12. 

Denver. 

3] 

Kansas City. 

13. 

Cheyenne. 

4. 

Kansas River. 

14. 

Dakota River. 

5. 

Topeka. 

15. 

Yankton. 

6. 

St. Joseph. 

16. 

Pierre. 

7. 

Lincoln. 

17. 

Black Hills. 

8. 

Platte River. 

18. 

Bismarck. 

9. 

Omaha. 

19. 

Y r ello\vstone River. 

10. 

Council Bluffs. 

20. 

Yellowstone Park. 


The Kansas River , or Republican Fork is of no use 
for navigation, having a broad, shallow channel; in 
some seasons it is nearly dry. 

Topeka is the capital of Kansas. 

St. Joseph , a city of about 50,000, was famous in 
pioneer times as a point at which wagon trains were 
made up to cross “the plains” and the mountains into 



THE MISSOURI BASIN 


101 


California. (Why did they go in “trains?”) In later 
years its growth has been checked by the competition 
of Kansas City and 

Omaha , the metropolis of Nebraska, a city about 
the same size as Kansas City. The largest silver smelt¬ 
ing works in the world are at Omaha; they handle a 
fourth of all the silver mined in the United States. 

Council Bluffs , in Iowa, opposite Omaha, was form¬ 
erly a meeting place of Indian tribes for consultation. 
For a long time it was the last village on the extreme 
western limit of civilized America, and like St. Joseph 
was a point at which trappers got their outfits before 
entering the Indian countn r beyond, and where emi¬ 
grants to the Pacific coast organized their companies to 
travel together for protection against hostile tribes. 

Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska. 

The Platte river is useless for navigation and resem¬ 
bles the Kansas. 

Denver and Indianapolis are the largest inland cities 
in the United states. Denver is situated on what was 
once a dry, treeless plain. It is built almost entirely of 
stone and brick, and the streets are well shaded. Thecity 
grew because of the mining industry. Why are there no 
steamboats in Colorado ? 

Cheyenne , the capital of Wyoming is a great ship¬ 
ping point for beef cattle. 

Yankton is at the mouth of the Dakota River. Pierre 
is the capital of South Dakota and Bismarck of North 
Dakota. 

The Black Hills are mostly covered with pine forests. 
This region produces gold. 


102 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The Yellowstone River rises in Yellowstone Park , a 
region noted for its wonderful scenery, hot springs, gey¬ 
sers and mud volcanoes. The description of this region 
as given by John Colter, a hunter and trapper who dis¬ 
covered it, was so incredible that the people of St. Louis 
where he afterward lived thought that in his wander¬ 
ings he had become insane, and they paid little attention 
to his account of the boiling springs of mud having all 
the colors of the rainbow, and of get r sers that throw 
boiling water hundreds of feet into the air. Those who 
heard him tell of his discovery called it “ Colter’s hell, ” 
and thought it was all a matter of the old man’s imag¬ 
ination. 

The teacher should gather from all available sources vivid descrip¬ 
tions and pictures of the Yellowstone Park, and should also have the 
pupils compare its area with that of some of the states east of the 
Mississippi. Werner’s Grammar School Geography gives the follow¬ 
ing description of 

THE YELLOWSTONE PARK. 

In the northwestern part of Wyoming, extending a little into 
Montana and Idaho, are 4,000 square miles which form the Yellow¬ 
stone National Park, and contain more natural wonders than any 
other region. 

Ages ago there was a deep rocky basin on the eastern side of the 
Great Divide of the Rocky Mountains. There the earth’s crust broke, 
and melted lava surged up from below, filling the basin and running 
over its sides upon the surrounding country. When this lava flow 
ceased, its surface cooled, leaving a black, solid crust to protect the 
fiery, interior. The snows of winter melted into numerous brooks; 
some of the water penetrated the cracks in the lava crust and became 
underground streams, which soon came in contact with the fires be¬ 
neath. The waters were changed to steam, whose explosive force 
tore up the rocks, till, hard as they were, they were crumbled to soft 
powder. Then came the ice age, and the movement of the ice contin¬ 
ued the work of tearing awav the lava blocks and of wearing deep 
valleys across their surface. When the ice melted, the water cut great 
gorges or canyons for its bed, or remained as lakes in the old depres¬ 
sions, or reached the fiery rocks beneath to be constantly hurled back 
again as steam and boiling water. Grass and flower seeds were 
brought by winds and birds from the valley below; these took root 
and grew, and trees, chiefly the red fir and mountain pine, sprang up. 


TEXAS AND THE ROUTES TO CALIFORNIA. 


103 


This wonderful region was for a long time known only to the 
buffalo, elk, bear, porcupine and beaver, the wild goose, the eagle and 
other birds. John Colter, a hunter, was the first white man to cross 
this region, and he reported what he had seen; he told about the 
strange geysers, some of which send forth boiling water 250 feet high, 
which explode after longer or shorter intervals, some of them coming 
from high mounds which have been made by the deposits from the 
water, others issuing directly from the level ground ; about the blue 
ponds of boiling water, hot enough to boil fish; about the springs 
whose hot water poured over terraces beautifully colored while all 
the land around was white and desolate; about the basins of bub¬ 
bling red, white, yellow and brown mud called “paint pots;” about 
the sulphur fumes which came from holes in the forest; about the 
beautiful Yellowstone Lake, thirty miles long, filled with trout; and 
about the clear Yellowstone River which a few miles from the lake 
passes over a fall a hundred feet high, and still farther away plunges 
over a cliff 260 feet high (the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone) into 
the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where it rushes, foaming, 
between steep walls of bright red, yellow, gray, and purple colored 
rock cut into fantastic shapes. 

These stories seemed too wonderful to believe. In 1871 the 
United States geologist sent out a party for systematic exploration, 
and Congress, the following year, set apart this whole region as a 
“public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of 
the people.” 


XI. 

TEXAS AND THE ROUTES TO CALIFORNIA. 

The coast of Louisiana and Texas is low. 

The Sabine river is the boundary between Louisi¬ 
ana and Texas. 

For a description of typical scenes in southern Louisiana read 
Longfellow’s Evangeline, Part Two, Sections II and III. 

Galveston , one of the largest cities of Texas, is on 
an island and has a good harbor; it is only a few feet 
above sea level, and sometimes the waves from the 
gulf have washed through its streets. 

Dallas and Fort Worth are in the prairie regions 
and are prosperous cities. 

Austin , the capital, is on the Colorado. 


104 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


San Antonio , near a river of the same name, is noted 
for the fight at the Alamo in the war for Texan inde¬ 
pendence. 


1. Sabine River. 

2. Galveston. 

3. Houston. 

4. Trinity River. 

5. Dallas. 

0. Fort Worth. 

7. BrazosRiver. 

8. Colorado Riv 

9. Austin. 

10. San Antonio. 

11. Rio Grande. 

12. Pecos River. 

13. Staked Plain. 

14. Santa Fe. 


The Rio Grande , is a long, shallow river of little im¬ 
portance for commerce, and noteworthy chiefly as an 
international boundary. 

Llano Estacado, a dry, flat desert region on a pla¬ 
teau in northwestern Texas. The name is the Spanish 
for “staked plain.” In crossing this desert travelers 
used to drive stakes at intervals to guide them so that 
they would not lose their way* Near the borders of 
this plain dwell two of the fiercest Indian tribes, the 
Comanches and the Apaches. 

Santa Fe, the oldest town in the United States,t has 

*Tbis is the usual explanation of the origin rf this name, but Werner’s Geogra¬ 
phy states that the name comes from the fact that the stems of the Yucca plant 
which abound there stand up like stakes. 

tSanta F6 was an Indian town of considerable size when the Spaniards ex¬ 
plored this region in 1538. The Spaniards founded St. Augustine; they found 
Santa F£. 







TEXAS AND THE ROUTES TO CALIFORNIA. 105 

a population of about 7,000, half of whom are Mexi¬ 
cans ; it is the capital of New Mexico. 

Notice the prevalence of long, narrow islands par¬ 
allel to the coast. Turn to the coast line of Maine or 
Norway and note the striking contrast. 

THREE FAMOUS ROUTES. 

After the discovery of gold in California there was 
a great influx of gold hunters from the then settled 
portions of the United States, embracing the region 
east of the Mississippi river. The immigration into 
California was b}^ three routes: (1) The overland 
route, or across “ the plains.” (2) The Panama route, 
or across the isthmus. (3) The ocean route around 
Cape Horn or through the strait of Magellan. 

With a map of the Western Hemisphere before him 
let the pupil see these three routes and point out the 
difficulties of each. The first was the shortest, but it 
involved a long land journey in wagons over dry plains 
and rugged mountains and through a land infested 
with hostile Indians. Sometimes the Mormons in 
Utah were also hostile. The second presented several 
obstacles. The trouble, delay and expense of carrying 
cargoes across the isthmus was considerable, and the 
danger from the deadly climate of the isthmus was 
great. By the ocean route the long journey in the slow 
sailing vessels of that da\ r was terrible. 

Owing to the difficulties of the journey many who 
started never reached their destination, and it came to 
be a common remark that wagon trains across the 
plains were able to find their way guided by the 
unburied skeletons of oxen, horses and men. Most of 


106 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


those who started from points west of the Alleghanies 
went over the plains. Those from New Orleans and 
the Atlantic seaboard went either by the isthmus or 
by Cape Horn. 

The need for a transcontinental railroad was soon 
felt, but whether the newly acquired Pacific coast 
would prove worth the great expenditure of a railroad 
to reach it was for a while in doubt; yet before a decade 
had passed a road was projected and work upon it 
begun. The Civil War soon followed, and the building 
of the road was temporarily suspended ; soon after the 
war, it was resumed and was finished in 1869. 

Let the pupils observe on a railroad map of the 
United States how the railroads shun the mountains, 
and that where they must cross mountain ranges they 
go through the passes. Note that in the central basin 
of the Mississippi the roads cross rivers in all directions, 
but when they approach the Rocky Mountains they 
run close to river beds and thus make an easy ascent 
of the great hights. Observe where the principal trans¬ 
continental lines cross the mountains. 

The completion of the first transcontinental railway was a mat¬ 
ter of great historic and commercial importance. The following 
graphic description of it may be of interest: 

The road had been built by different contractors from the east 
and from the west to Promontory Point, the very backbone of the 
continent. The locomotives and trains had met here for the purpose 
of laying the last tie and for uniting the open link in the rail. West 
Evans who had furnished the first tie was there with the last one—a 
beautiful specimen of the California laurel, which was duly put down 
and then taken up and preserved A telegraph wire had been carried 
down to the Golden Gate and attached to a Parrot gun, eight hundred 
miles away. The governors of four states and territories are there 
with their gold and silver spikes—the last rail is laid, a telegraph 
wire is coiled around a silver hammer and the president of the road 
taps the head of a golden spike. The gentle tap fired the Parrot gun 
at San Francisco; at this signal the bells of the city rang out the 


MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE COLORADO RIVER. 107 

people’s joy upon the free air, the news was carried to every city in 
the land and the world shouted that the Atlantic was wedded to the 
Pacific in bonds stronger than those of any metal—a united civiliza¬ 
tion. This was May 10, 1869. 


XII. 


MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE COL¬ 
ORADO RIVER. 

This is a region which yields less readily to the 
tracing and sketching method of study than almost any 
other, because of the peculiar relief forms which prevail. 
The country is a vast plateau about a mile and a half 
high and studded on its border with many mountain 
peaks three miles high, some of which are active vol¬ 
canoes. The plateau becomes higher toward the south, 
reaching its culmination near the isthmus of Tehuante¬ 
pec, which is crossed by a chain of thirteen volcanoes. 
This form of relief accounts for the absence of rivers. 
We cannot penetrate the country by means of commer¬ 
cial water ways, for there are none. 

Although but little map study is called for in teach¬ 
ing the geography of Mexico, yet the description of the 
country as given in any good school geography is inter¬ 
esting—the more so because so many things are widely 
different from what the pupil has thus far learned in the 
study of North America. A few of the things especially 
noteworthy are: 

1. The absence of large cities; Mexico is the only 
one. Learn about the habits and character of the peo¬ 
ple. In the city of Mexico there are neither stoves nor 


108 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


chimneys, and most of the houses are only one story 
high. 

2. The wide difference between the climate of the 
coast and of the interior, and the causes of this differ¬ 
ence. 

3. No good harbors on the east. Some good har¬ 
bors on the west, but no cities. Why ? 

4. Interesting vegetation: Mahogany trees and 
cactus plants. The century plant (the agave) blooms 
when about ten years old, although there is a prevalent 
superstition in northern countries that it blooms only 
once in a century. From its juice an intoxicating liquor 
is made called pulque. One species of the agave is the 
soap plant; its roots are used as soap. 

Central America is like Mexico in climate, products 
and inhabitants. It is interesting to us chiefly on ac¬ 
count of the proposed ship canal by way of Lake Nicar¬ 
agua. Observe on the map the position and size of the 
lake, that its outlet is to the eastward and that the 
strip of land between it and the Pacific is very narrow. 
The following description of the climate of Mexico is 
taken from William Hawley Smith’s Walks Abroad: 

We got into the City of Mexico about the middle of January, and 
we left it the first of March, and if we saw a cloud in the sky bigger 
than Barnum’s circus tent during all that time, I have forgotten it. 
Six weeks of sunshine without a break! And I was told by perfectly 
reliable parties that it had been just that way ever since the first of 
October, and that that was the regular thing, every year. 

That is to say, from October to March it never rains in Mexico 
City. The sun shines continually (I mean by day , dear literal critic) 
tor more than five months in the year, and umbrellas can go to the 
pawn shop all that time, so far as rainy weather is concerned. 

In early April the rains begin, and they come decentb r and in 
order. In the first place, they always come in the afternoon. It 
never rains in the morning in Mexico City. The showers come at 
about five o’clock in the afternoon, and they are generally over by 


MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE COLORADO RIVER. 109 

seven. Sometimes they last till into the night, but not often. The 
mornings are always bright, and a fellow always has a fair chance to 
get his work done, every day, before the rain begins. 

During June. July and August, it rains every day, from five to 
seven p. m., and no postponement on account of the weather. By 
October first the rains are over, and they can be absolutely relied 
upon not to show up again till the following April. 

Now, that is what I call a good weather program, so far as the 
hydraulic part of it is concerned. As to the heat, that is equally sat¬ 
isfactory. The mean temperature for the year is 65 degrees Fahren¬ 
heit. The hottest month is May, when the thermometer sometimes 
reaches 85 degrees. The coldest month is August, when the mercury 
gets as low as 50 degrees. During our stay, from January to March, 
the hottest weather we had was 75 degrees, and the coldest 55 de¬ 
grees. 

♦ But I must draw rein, for once on this subject of the climate of 
Mexico City, I shall write on to the end of the book if I don’t put a 
limit on myself. 

And even then I could not tell of all its charms. How the farmers 
have six rainless months in which to gather their crops and no harm 
to fear for their grain. How they have more than four months to 
plant it, and yet their crops all come up together and get ripe to¬ 
gether ; because you' see about the first of December the ground gets 
so dry that grain will not sprout in it, even though it is planted, 
but will lie there, safe and sound, till the rains come, and then all 
come up at once and grow evenly, and get ripe evenly. 

THE COLORADO RIVER. 

Note that this is one of the largest rivers of the 
United States, but one of the least important commer¬ 
cially. State several reasons for its lack of commercial 
importance. Its chief branches are the Gila, a river of 
some historic importance, and in its upper course the 
Green. 

The great canyon is the most important feature of 
the Colorado. Help the pupils to conceive of its great 
depth by making some comparisons. Probably they 
have never seen a church spire or other building higher 
than 150 feet. Let them try to think of two such spires 
one on top of the other. To stand on a river bank and 
look straight down a distance of 300 feet at the water 
running swiftly at the bottom of a narrow, rocky chan- 


no 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


nel would give an impression of great depth; or to be in 
a boat on the river and look up to the top of a cliff on 
either side 300 feet high would be impressive. What 
shall we say then of a river in a narrow gorge or chan¬ 
nel, between rocky almost vertical walls twenty times 
300 feet high and running in such a chasm for a distance 
of 200 miles ? 


XIII. 

CALIFORNIA. 

San Diego is the oldest town in California; it is an 
important port, has a hotel that cost over a million 
dollars, and a few miles back is the famous Sweetwater 
dam, one of the largest in the world, built of solid ma¬ 
sonry 90 feet high. 

On the Santa Barbara Islands many sheep are 
raised. Sea fowls in great numbers make their nests 
here, and a considerable commerce is carried on in col¬ 
lecting and selling their eggs. 

Los Angeles is the center of the orange producing 
region of California. It is about the size of Des Moines. 
It is noted for its delightful climate, and its great ex¬ 
ports of fruit and wine. 

Golden Gate, the entrance to San Francisco Bay, is 
over a mile wide, and five miles long; it is defended by 
two forts. Its shores are rocky cliffs, in some places 
2,000 feet high. Interpret the meaning of these lines 
from B. F. Taylor: 

From Hell Gate to Golden Gate — 

A sweep continental, and the Sabbath unbroken. 

San Francisco is a little larger than Milwaukee; it 


CALIFORNIA. 


Ill 


is probably the most cosmopolitan city in America. It 
has a park of over a thousand acres extending along 
the seashore. San Francisco has a large foreign com¬ 
merce with Asiatic ports, and its coasting trade extends 
to Sitka; its harbor is one of the largest and best in the 
world. Cable cars were first used is this city. Many 
of the wealthy business men of San Francisco have fine 
residences in 

Oakland , on the east side of the bay, a city about 
the size of Dubuque. 

The San Joaquin Riverhas this peculiarity: Its trib¬ 
utaries are numerous on the right bank, and they run 
parallel to one another in narrow valleys, but there are 
none on the left. Remembering that the rain bearing 
winds are from the Pacific, and that the Sierras are 
high and snow-capped, while the coast range is com¬ 
paratively low, this is easily explained. 

The Merced River , in one of these narrow valleys, 
contains the famous Yosemite Falls. Perhaps nowhere 
else in the world is there so much beauty and grandeur 
of scenery. The river makes a fall of 2600 feet. 

Tulare Lake is surrounded by a swamp, which in 
the rainy season overflows into the San Joaquin River, 
but there is no well defined channel from the lake to 
the river. 

Mount Whitney is the highest peak in California, 
nearly 15,000 feet high. 

Mohave Desert is the hottest region in the United 
States, and one of the hottest in the world. One por¬ 
tion of it lies below the sea level, and is called Death 
Valle\ r . It is thus described by a recent writer: 


112 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The geological formation of Death Valley is paralleled by but one 
other spot on the globe—the Dead Sea region of the Holy Land. The 
valley is about eight miles broad and thirty-five in length. It lies far 
below the level ot the Pacific in some places as much as 160 feet, and 
has the appearance of being under the ban of some terrible curse. 
Thunder storms pound around its borders, but no cloud ever inter¬ 
cepts the rays of the scorching sun that continually beat down upon 
Death Valley sands, until they are hotter than those of “burning 
Sahara.” For week in and week out the thermometer stands above 
100 degrees night and day, sometimes rising to 125 in the afternoons. 
Moisture of all kinds is unknown ; dead animals dry up and mummify 
in the sand. 



1 . 

San Diego. 

8. 

Merced River and Yosemite Fall 

2. 

Santa Barbara Islands. 

9. 

Tulare Lake. 

3. 

Los Angeles. 

10. 

Coast Range. 

4. 

Golden Gate, City and 

11. 

Mount Whitney. 


Bay of San Francisco. 

12. 

Sacramento River. 

5. 

Oakland. 

13. 

Sacramento. 

6. 

San Joaquin River. 

14. 

Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

7. 

Stockton. 

15. 

Mount Shasta. 


Sacramento is the capital of California. 




CALIFORNIA. 


113 


Mount Shasta , over 14,000 feet high, is one of the 
famous peaks of the United States, and is nearly as 
high as Mt. Whitney. It marks the point where the 
Sierras and the Coast Range diverge. 

GENERAL FACTS TO BE NOTED. 

Observe the peculiar arrangement of the mountains 
of California. At Mt. Shasta the two ranges separate 
and leave a long elliptical valley between them, com¬ 
ing together again a little north of Los Angeles. This 
valley has the one door, the Golden Gate, and is drained 
by two rivers of about equal size. This double valley is 
the most important part of the state. In the northern 
valley wheat and cattle are raised ; the southern valley 
is the great fruit region. 

Although California extends north and south for a 
distance greater than from Chicago to Charleston, S. C., 
yet the average temperature between the northern and 
southern ends of the state differs by only four degrees. 
In the neighborhood of Monterey ripe strawberries can 
be picked from vines every month in the year. Tomato 
vines in California have been known to grow thirty 
feet high, and to live from year to year. * 

California produces one-half the gold of the United 
States, and one-seventh of the world’s supply. Quick¬ 
silver is also an important product; it is used largely 
in separating gold from dross. Near San Francisco 
along the coast are many sea lions and some seals.* 
The big trees of California are famous. They are 
of the species called Sequoia, a kind of red cedar. No 
trees except the eucalyptus, of Australia, are larger 
than these. One grove of them is near the Yosemite, 


114 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


another in Calaveras Count3 r . They grow to a hight 
of over 300 feet; one which is fallen has a girth of 110 
feet. Let the pupils try to imagine an old log lying in 
the woods, so large that to get across it, one must 
climb up a distance three times as great as the hight of 
the schoolroom. 

The following notes are from Our Great Pacific 
Commonwealth in the Century for December 1896: 

Among the products of California is almost everything which 
would appear in an elaborate dinner menu, from the course of olives 
to the course of oranges, nuts and raisins, excluding only the coffee. 

The Sacramento Valley is held in vast estates, principally devoted 
to the cultivation of grain, which has been a losing industry for sev¬ 
eral years. 

In southern California the water supply has become almost as 
precious as gold. 

California is about as large as France, and its capacity for sus¬ 
taining as large a population (38,000,000) is fully as great, but its 
population is now only a million and a quarter. 

A colony of millionaires has been established in southern Califor¬ 
nia, to which desirable families are admitted only on condition that 
they will spend $250,000 each for improvements. 

“ California is the rich man’s paradise and the poor man’s hell.” 

Californians are just beginning to pickle the ripe olives. The dif¬ 
ference between a green olive and a ripe one, is precisely the difference 
between a green and a ripe apple. In Spain, the people subsist large¬ 
ly on olives, but not on green ones. When the American public be¬ 
come acquainted with the ripe fruit which is now being pickled, its 
consumption will be enormously increased, for in its new form the 
olive is nutritious and palatable, and the people will depend on it as 
an article of diet. 

What promises to be one of the largest copper mines in the world 
has recently been opened in Shasta County with the aid of British 
capitalists. 

Perhaps the earliest triumph of “the new woman ” in this gener¬ 
ation was that of Miss Austin and her three associates—all school 
teachers of San Francisco—who founded the wonderful raisin indus¬ 
try^ Investing their savings in a ranch, and then boldly venturing 
upon a culture in which few had faith, they demonstrated that raisins 
equal to those of Spain could be produced in the San Joaquin. They 
were rewarded with handsome profits, and later thousands of people 
shared in the benefits of their demonstration. 


OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


115 


XIV. 

OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


The map given in this lesson is to be used in 
connection with the reading of The Story of a Salmon. 
For the usual purpose of study, the following places 
also should be learned and located on a sketch map: 


Columbia River. 
Portland. 
Willamette River. 
Salem. 

Cascade Mountains. 
Mount Hood. 

Snake River. 

Boise. 


Cape Flattery. 

Juan de Fuca Strait. 
Puget Sound. 

Seattle. 

Tacoma. 

Mount Tacoma (Rainier.) 
Olympia. 

Vancouver Island. 


A study of the rainfall of Oregon and Washington, 
in connection with the Japan current and the prevailing 
winds should be undertaken. 

Call attention to the numerous Islands in Puget 
Sound. Two counties of Washington are composed en¬ 
tirety of these islands. Turn to the history and review 
the northwest boundary disputes which were settled in 
1846 and in 1872. 

On the Columbia river between the Cascade Moun¬ 
tains and its mouth, are very extensive salmon fisheries 
and canning establishments, second only to those of 
Alaska; they employ about 2,000 vessels, and produce 
an annual output valued at over $3,000,000. 

The word salmon is from the Latin saltire, to leap. Trout belong 
to the salmon family; they also are able to leap from the water and 
ascend rivers in which are rapids and other obstructions. 

The teacher of geography who makes the study consist wholly or 
even chiefly in learning the location of places, fixing in memory and 
reproducing map forms and memorizing the fragmentary and juiceless 
bits of information furnished by the text-book makes a mistake al¬ 
most as great as that made by some of the extremely “modern” 
teachers of this branch who go to the other extreme and present little 


116 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


more than a succession of disconnected stories of remarkable scenes 
and peculiar occupations and modes of life in remote and unimport¬ 
ant lands. 

The one method is deadening because it lacks in human interest, 
the other is debilitating because it lacks the element of serious work. 
Pupils taught by the first, learn map symbols without knowing 
what they mean ; those taught by the second have a jumble of' vivid 
pictures” as unsubstantial and unrelated as the impressions they get 
from Alice in Wonderland or The Arabian Nights. A hazy, nebulous 
mass of facts relating chiefly to the strange and picturesque things in 
foreign and unfrequented countries, however much entertainment the 
child may get in the presentation of such matter, is not ol much real 
value, and should not be regarded as geographic knowledge. But 
the wise teacher will avoid both extremes; he will teach only a rea¬ 
sonable amount of map work, but having decided in his own mind 
what is reasonable for the particular class in hand will require that 
the tracing and sketching lessons carefully selected shall be thorough¬ 
ly learned. Then he will supplement the descriptive text with what¬ 
ever may be needed to illumine and vivify the lessons. Such supple¬ 
mentary matter will be definitely associated with the map so that in 
the child’s mind the knowledge thus imparted shall have a local 
habitation. 

It is seldom wise to read a long selection or make a long talk, 
however interesting it may be, without making frequent pauses to 
question the pupils on the meaning, refer to the map, or have the sub¬ 
stance of a paragraph stated in order to insure attention. As an 
illustration of a very profitable kind of supplementary work in 
geography we present here an account of the life history of a salmon, 
by Dr. David Starr Jordan, with notes and suggestions for the teach¬ 
er. The exercise is suitable for any grade of pupils who may be 
studying text-book geography, from the fifth grade to the high school. 

A study of the map of the Columbia basin should precede, and a 
review of it may accompany the reading of the story. A sketch map 
of the region may be placed on the board belorehand or may be made 
as the reading proceeds. It will add to the interest if a large picture 
of Mt. Tacoma be drawn on the board in green and white. 

At any one of the points indicated by the notes, the reading for 
the day may stop, and next day the story be continued after the 
children have been allowed to tell it as far as read. 

The reference numbers in the text are to the map. Use the map. 

THE STORY OF A SALMON. 

In the realm of the Northwest Wind, on the boundary 
line between the dark fir forests and the sunny plains, 
there stands a mountain—a great white cone two miles 
and a half in perpendicular hight. On its lower mile the 
dense fir woods cover it with never changing green ; on 


OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


117 


its next half mile a lighter green of grass and bushes 
gives place in winter to white; and on its uppermost 
mile the snows of the great ice age still linger in unspot¬ 
ted purit 3 r . The people of Washington say their moun¬ 
tain is the great “King-pin of the Universe,’’ which 
shows that even in its own county Mount Tacoma 1 is 
not without honor. 



How high is Mt. Tacoma? How does the Pacific slope north of 
Mt. Tacoma differ from that part south of it ? How much and what 
part of the mountain is always white? How far up is the timber 
line? How wideis the middle belt and how does it change ? What is 
this mountain sometimes called ? What is said of its shape ? 

If the pupils cannot answer all these questions, re-re id the para¬ 
graph. 

Flowing down from the southwest slope of Mount 
Tacoma is a cold, clear river, 2 fed by the melting snows 
of the mountain. Madly it hastens down over white 
cascades and beds of shining sand, through birch woods 









118 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


and belts of dark firs, to mingle its waters at last with 
those of the great Columbia. 3 This river is the Cowlitz; 
and on its bottom, not many years ago, there lay half 
buried in the sand a number of little orange colored 
globules, each about as large as a pea. These were not 
much in themselves, but great in their possibilities. In 
the waters above them little suckers and chubs and 
prickly sculpins strained their mouths to draw these 
globules from the sand, and vicious looking crawfishes 
picked them up with their blundering hands and exam¬ 
ined them with their telescopic eyes. But one, at least, 
of the globules escaped their curiosity, else this story 
would not be worth telling. The sun shone down on it 
through the clear water, and the ripples of the Cowlitz 
said over it their incantations, and in it at last awoke 
a living being. It was a fish—a curious little fellow, not 
half an inch long, with great, staring eyes, which made 
almost half his length, and with a body so transparent 
that he could not cast a shadow. He was a little sal¬ 
mon, a very little salmon ; but the water was good, and 
there were flies and worms and little living creatures in 
abundance for him to eat, and he soon became a larger 
salmon. Then there were many more little salmon with 
him, some larger and some smaller, and they all had a 
merry time. Those who had been born soonest and had 
grown largest used to chase the others around and bite 
ofl their tails, or, still better, take them by the heads 
and swallow them whole; for, said they, “even young 
salmon are good eating.” “Heads I win, tails you lose,” 
was their motto. Thus, what was once two small sal¬ 
mon became united into a single larger one, and the 


OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


119 


process of “addition, division, and silence” still went on. 

By and by, when all the salmon were too large to 
be swallowed, they began to grow restless. They saw 
that the water rushing by seemed to be in a great hurry 
to get somewhere, and it was somehow suggested that 
its hurry was caused by something good to eat at the 
other end of its course. Then they all started down the 
stream, salmon-fashion—which fashion is to get into 
the current, head upstream, and thus to drift backward 
as the river sweeps along. 

Down the Cowlitz River the salmon went for a day 
and a night, finding much to interest them which we 
need not know. At last they began to grow hungry; 
and corning near the shore, they saw an angleworm of 
rare size and beauty floating in an eddy of the stream. 
Quick as thought one of them opened his mouth, which 
was well filled with teeth of different sizes, and put it 
around the angleworm. Quicker still he felt a sharp 
pain in his gills, followed by a smothering sensation, 
and in an instant his comrades saw him rise straight 
into the air. This was nothing new to them; for they 
often leaped out of the water in their games of hide-and- 
seek, but only to come down again with a loud splash 
not far from where they went out. But this one never 
came back, and the others went on their course won¬ 
dering. 

What kind of a river is the Cowlitz ? Where does it rise and how 
is it fed ? Of what size, shape and color are salmon eggs ? Describe 
the appearance of a very young salmon. What does the young 
salmon eat ? How do salmon go down stream ? What became of 
one of these little fishes ? 

At last they came to where the Cowlitz and the Co- 



120 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


lumbia join, and they were almost lost for a time; for 
they could find no shores, and the bottom and the top 
of the water were so far apart. Here they saw other 
and far larger salmon in the deepest part of the current, 
turning neither to the right nor to the left, but swim¬ 
ming right on up stream just as rapidly as they could. 
And these great salmon would not stop for them, and 
would not lie and float with the current. They had no 
time to talk, even in the simple sign language by which 
fishes express their ideas, and no time to eat. They had 
important work before them, and the time was short. 
So they went up the river, keeping their great purposes 
to’ themselves; and our little salmon and his friends 
from the Cowlitz drifted down the stream. 

Before reading the last few words of this sentence let the children 
say what the little salmon will probably do. Will they follow the 
large ones ? Would the large ones eat them ? No ; for “they had no 
time to eat.” 

By and by the water began to change. It grew 
denser, and no' longer flowed rapidly along; and twice 
a day it used to turn about and flow the other way. 
Then the shores disappeared, 4 and the water began to 
have a different and peculiar flavor,—a flavor which 
seemed to the salmon much richer and more inspiring 
than the glacier water of their native Cowlitz. There 
are many curious things to see—crabs with hard shells 
and savage faces, but so good when crushed and swal¬ 
lowed ! Then there were lucious squid swimming about; 
and, to a salmon, squid are like.ripe peaches and cream. 
There were great companies of delicate sardines and 
herring, green and silvery, and it was such fun to chase 
and capture them ! Those who eat sardines packed in 


OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


121 


oil by greasy fingers, and herrings dried in the smoke, 
can have little idea how satisfying it is to have a meal 
of them, plump and sleek and silvery, fresh from the sea. 

Thus the salmon chased the herrings about, and had 
a merry time. Then they were chased about in turn by 
great sea lions — swimming monsters with huge half¬ 
human faces, long, thin whiskers, and blundering ways. 
The sea lions liked to bite out the throat of a salmon, 
with its precious stomach full of lucious sardines, and 
then to leave the rest of the fish to shift for itself. And 
the seals and the herrings scattered the salmon about, 
till at last the hero of our story found himself quite 
alone, with none of his own kind near him. But that 
did not trouble him much, and he went on his own way, 
getting his dinner when he was hungry, which was all 
the time, and then eating a little between meals for his 
stomach’s sake. 

So it went on for three long years ; and at the end 
of this time our little fish had grown to be a great, fine 
salmon of twenty-two pounds’ weight, shining like a 
new tin pan, and with rows of the loveliest round black 
spots on his head and back and tail. One day, as he 
was swimming about, idly chasing a big sculpin with a 
head so thorny that he was never swallowed by any¬ 
body, all of a sudden the salmon noticed a change in the 
water around him. 

Spring had come again, and the south-hung snow 
drifts on the Cascade Mountains 6 once more felt that 
the “earth was wheeling sunwards.” The cold snow 
waters ran down from the mountains and into the 
Columbia River, and made a freshet in the river. The 


122 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


high water went far out into the sea and our salmon 
felt it on his gills. He remembered how the cold water 
used to feel in the Cowlitz when he was a little fish. In 
a blundering, fishy fashion he thought about it; he won¬ 
dered whether the little eddy looked as it used to look, 
and whether caddis worms and young mosquitoes 
were reall3 r as sweet and tender as he used to think they 
were. Then he thought some other things; but as the 
salmon’s mind is located in the optic lobes of his brain, 
and ours is in a different place, we cannot be quite cer¬ 
tain what his thoughts really were. 

What change did they notice in the water? What made the 
water flow up the river? How often did this occur? Describe the 
salmon’s life in the ocean. How does the sea lion eat salmon ? How 
long did the salmon stay in the ocean ? How did he then look ? 
What is meant by the “earth was wheeling sunwards?” What 
caused the next change in the water ? 

What our salmon did, we know. He did what 
every grown salmon in the ocean does when he feels the 
glacier water once more upon his gills. He became a 
changed being. He spurned the blandishments of soft- 
shelled crabs. The pleasures of the table and of the 
chase, heretofore his only delights, lost their charms 
for him. He turned his course straight toward the 
direction whence the cold water came, and for the rest 
of his life never tasted a mouthful of food. He moved 
on towards the river mouth, at first playfully, as 
though he were not really certain whether he meant 
anything after all. Afterward, when he struck the full 
current of the Columbia, he plunged straight forward 
with an unflinching determination that had in it some¬ 
thing of the heroic. When he had passed the rough 
water at the bar, he was not alone. His old neighbors 


OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


123 


of the Cowlitz, and more from the Des Chutes, & 

the Yakima 7 and the Spokane, 8 —a great army of sal¬ 
mon—were with him. In front were thousands press¬ 
ing on, and behind them were thousands more, all 
moving by a common impulse which urged them up 
the Columbia. 

They were all swimming bravely along where the 
current was deepest, when suddenly the foremost felt 
something tickling like a cobweb about their noses and 
under their chins. They changed their course a little to 
brush it off, and it touched their fins as well. Then 
they tried to slip down with the current, and thus 
leave it behind. But, no! the thing, whatever it was, 
although its touch was soft, refused to let go, and held 
them like a fetter. The more they struggled, the 
tighter became its grasp, and the whole foremost rank 
of the salmon fell in together; for it was a great gill net, 
a quarter of a mile long, stretched squarely across the 
mouth of the river. 

By and by men came in boats and hauled up the 
gill net and the helpless salmon that had become entan¬ 
gled in it. They threw the fish into a pile in the bot¬ 
tom of the boat, and the others saw them no more. 

All this time our salmon is going up the river, 
eluding one net as by a miracle, and soon having need 
of more miracles to escape the rest; passing by Astoria 9 
on a fortunate day, he came to where the nets were 
few, and, at last, to where they ceased altogether. 
But there he found that scarcely any of his companions 
were with him; for the nets cease when there are no 
more salmon to be caught in them. So he went on, day 


124 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


and night, where the water was the deepest, stopping 
not to feed or loiter on the wa}^ till at last he came to 
a wild gorge, where the great river became an angry 
torrent, rushing wildly over a huge staircase of rock. 
But our hero did not falter; and summoning all his 
forces, he plunged into the Cascades . 10 The current 
caught him and dashed him against the rocks. A 
whole row of silvery scales came off and glistened in 
the water like sparks of fire, and a place on his side 
became black and red, which, for a salmon, is the same 
as being black and blue for other people. His comrades 
tried to go up with him, and one lost his eye, one his 
tail, and one had his lower jaw pushed back into his 
head like the joint of a telescope. Again he tried to 
surmount the Cascades; and at last he succeeded, and 
an Indian on the rocks above was waiting to receive 
him. But the Indian with his spear was less skilful 
than he was wont to be, and our hero escaped, losing 
only a part of one of his fins; and with him came one 
other, and henceforth these two pursued their journey 
together. 

What is meant by “the rough water at the bar?” Where is 
Astoria and for what is it noted ? Point out on the map the cause of 
the very swift current at the Cascades. How many and what ways 
of catching fish have been mentioned in the story ? 

Now a gradual change took place in the looks of 
our salmon. In the sea he was plump and round and 
silvery, with delicate teeth in a symmetrical mouth. 
Now his silvery color disappeared, his skin grew slimy, 
and the scales sank into it; his back grew black and his 
sides turned red, not a healthy red, but a sort of hectic 
flush. He grew poor, and his back, formerly as straight 


OREGON AND WASHINGTON. 


125 


as need be, now developed an unpleasant hump at the 
shoulders. His eyes—like those of all enthusiasts who 
forsake eating and sleeping for some loftier aim—became 
dark and sunken. His symmetrical jaws grew longer 
and longer, and meeting each other, as the nose of an 
old man meets his chin, each had to turn aside to let 
the other pass. His beautiful teeth grew longer and 
longer, and projected from his mouth, giving him a sav¬ 
age and wolfish appearance, quite at variance with his 
real disposition. For all the desires and ambitions of his 
nature had become centered into one. We may not 
know what this one was, but we know that it was a 
strong one; for it had led him on and on—past the nets 
and horrors of Astoria; past the dangerous Cascades; 
past the spears of Indians; through the terrible flumes 
of the Dalles 11 where the mighty river is compressed 
between huge rocks into a channel narrower than a vil¬ 
lage street; on past the meadows of Umatilla 12 and the 
wheat fields of Walla Walla , 13 on to where the great 
Snake River 14 and the Columbia join; on up the Snake 
River and its eastern branch, till at last he reaches the 
foot of the Bitter Root Mountains 16 in the State of 
Idaho, nearly a thousand miles from the ocean which 
he had left in April. With him still was the other 
salmon which had come with him through the Cas¬ 
cades, handsomer and smaller than he, and, like him, 
growing poor and ragged and tired. 

At last, one October afternoon, our finny travelers 
came together to a little clear brook, with a bottom of 
fine gravel, over which the water was but a few inches 
deep. Our fish painfully worked his way to it; for his 


126 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


tail was all frayed out, his muscles were sore, and his 
skin covered with unsightly blotches. But his sunken 
eye saw a ripple in the stream, and under it a bed of 
little pebbles and sand. So there in the sand he scooped 
out with his tail a smooth round place, and his com¬ 
panion came and filled it with orange colored eggs; the 
work of their lives was done, and, in the old salmon 
fashion, they drifted tail foremost down the stream. 

Next morning, a settler in the Bitter Root region, 
passing by the brook near his house, noticed that a 
“dog salmon” had run in there, and seemed “mighty 
nigh tuckered out.” So he took a hoe, and wading into 
the brook rapped the fish on the head with it, and carry¬ 
ing it ashore threw it to the hogs. But the hogs had a 
surfeit of salmon meat, so they ate only the soft parts, 
leaving the head untouched. A wandering naturalist 
found it there and sent it to the United States Fish 
Commission to be identified. Thus it came to me. 

How wide is the Columbia near Astoria ? How wide is it at the 
Dalles? What changes took place in the salmon’s appearance as he 
went up the river? How long did it take the fish to make this jour¬ 
ney ? How many miles did they go up the stream ? What did they 
eat during this time? Find on the map the name of the eastern 
branch of the Snake River. How did the salmon look when the 
journey was done, and what occurred after that ? 

XV. 

THE NORTHERN PART OF NORTH AMERICA 

Find on the map all the plaees noted in the list in page 127 and 
draw a sketch to correspond. 

Vancouver Island is a mountainous tract, heavily 
wooded. The terminus of the Canadian Pacific Rail¬ 
way is on the island. 

Sitka is the largest town of Alaska and has about 


THE NORTHERN’ PART OF NORTH AMERICA. 


127 


1,500 inhabitants. It has a good harbor, and the 
climate is not severe, being modified by the warm winds 
from the Pacific. One of the large capitals of Europe 
(St. Petersburg) is farther north than Sitka. 

The three great mountains, Logan and St. Elias in 
Canada, and Wrangel in Alaska, occupy the highest 
part of North America. Mt. Logan is the highest of 
the three and is the seventh in the world, (19,500 feet). 
Wrangel is the second of the gronp. 


1. Vancouver Island. 

2. Sitka. 

3. Mount St. Elias. 

4. Mount Logan. 

5. Mount Wrangel 

6. Alaska Peninsula. 

7. Aleutian Islands. 

8. Island of Attu. 

9. Bering Sea. 

10. Pribylof Islands. 

11. Yukon River. 

12. Klondike River. 

13. Bering Strait. 

14. Point Barrow. 


15. Mackenzie River. 

16. Great Bear Lake. 

17. Great Slave Lake. 

18. Arctic Archipelago. 

19. Magnetic Pole. 

20. Hudson Bay. 

21. Nelson River. 

22. Lake Winnipeg. 

23. Winnipeg. 

2+. Red River of North. 

25. Lake of the Woods. 

26. Janies Bay. 

27. Hudson Strait. 

28. Labrabor. 


The Aleutian Islands forma sort of “broken bridge” 
between Alaska Peninsula and Kamchatka, and 
many believe that these islands furnish the original 
road by which America was peopled from Asia. The 
word Aleutian means high and rocky, and describes the 
character of the islands. Notice the regular curve in 
which they are arranged. 

The Island of Attu is the most western possession 
of the United States, and is a little farther west of San 
Francisco than San Francisco is of Maine. For a few 
days in summer the sun rises atEastport, Me., before it 
sets on this island. 


128 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The Pribylof Islands in Bering Sea are especially 
important as breeding places of the seal. 

The Yukon is one of the great rivers of the world. 
It is about 2,000 miles long, and it discharges so much 
water that for ten miles out beyond its mouth the sea 
is noticeably fresh. And yet the Yukon is one of the 
least important of rivers. One little river in North 
America only about 20 miles long is more than a mil¬ 
lion times as valuable to man as the Yukon. 

The Klondike , a tributary of the Yukon, is in a fa¬ 
mous gold producing region which lies in Canada, just 
east of the boundary of Alaska. It is reached by the 
Yukon, which is open for three months in the year, 
through Chilcat Pass, north of Sitka and by the over¬ 
land route via Winnipeg and the Mackenzie. The de¬ 
velopment of this gold field may increase the import¬ 
ance of the Yukon River. 

Point Barrow is the northern extremit}^ of the 
mainland of North America. A little Eskimo village of 
about 150 people is here, also a mission school. It is in 
about the same latitude as Hammerfest, the most 
northern town of Europe, and has continual night from 
the middle of November to the 23d of January and a 
corresponding period in summer during which the sun 
does not set. 

Mackenzie River and the great lake region which it 
drains are interesting chiefly as.marking the northern 
slope of the great central plain of which the Mississippi 
basin is the southern slope. The river never can be¬ 
come of any great commercial importance. 

The map of the great archipelago in the northern 


THE NORTHERN TART OF NORTH AMERICA. 


129 


part of British America is not accurate in detail, for the 
reason that very little is known about that region, and 
whether certain areas are land or water, islands or 
peninsulas, cannot be positively known, for during 
most of the year snow and ice cover the land and also 
the narrower bodies of water. 

The earth has four magnetic poles, two northern 
and two southern. These should not be confounded 
with the poles of rotation. Note that this one is 
almost due north of Omaha. 

Compare Hudson Bay with the Gulf of Mexico as 
to size, area drained, temperature and commercial im¬ 
portance. 

Nelson River is the most important tributary of 
Hudson Bay and flows out of Lake Winnipeg, on which 
is the city of Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba. 

Winnipeg is a well built city of about 30,000, and 
was founded in 1870. It is the metropolis of the Cana¬ 
dian Northwest and is the center of a rich agricultural 
region. Although its water outlet, Nelson River, is 
open for navigation part of the year, most of the busi¬ 
ness of this city is done by railroads, of which it is an 
important center. 

Red River of the North is the boundary between 
North Dakota and Minnesota; its valley is a famous 
wheat region. 

Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake are important 
chiefly as boundary waters; they are in a region which 
for the most part is an uninhabited wilderness. 

Hudson Bay and Strait and Hudson River, were 


130 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


discovered by Henry Hudson. He was set adrift in the 
bay by his mutinous sailors, and perished. 

Labrador is said to be the most desolate and unin¬ 
viting portion of the earth’s surface—the most useless 
as a home for men. Considerable fishing is done on 
the coast, but the interior is a cold, wind-swept waste 
of hills and rocks in winter, interspersed with flat por¬ 
tions which are swamps in summer. In some places the 
surface is covered two and even three layers deep with 
huge round stones or bowlders; in summer the mos¬ 
quitoes make it almost impossible for men to remain 
in the region. 


XVI. 

THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN. 

Newfoundland is not a part of Canada, but has a 
separate colonial government. The island is moder¬ 
ately fertile. A third of its surface is covered with fresh¬ 
water lakes. The coast abounds in fish. East of the 
island are the famous banks of Newfoundland which 
are shoals or submerged islands. The gulf stream and 
the cold currents from the Arctic Ocean meet here and 
produce dense fogs. Icebergs are numerous to the east 
of these banks. 

Nova Scotia , the capital of Halifax, is a province of 
Canada which includes the peninsula and Cape Breton 
Island. On the west coast of Nova Scotia is the Bay of 
Fund}'; it has the highest tides in the world, 70 feet. 

Prince Ed ward Island is the smallest province of the 
Dominion of Canada. The substitution of iron for 
wood in the building of ships killed what was once a 


Newfoundland. 18. Lake 


THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN. 


131 



38. Lake St. Clair. 46. Green Bay. 

39. St. Clair River. 47. Marinette. 

40. Port Huron. 48. Greenbav. 

41. Lake Huron. 49. Fox River. 

42. Saginaw Bay. 50. Appleton. 






132 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


51. Lake Winnebago. 

52. Oshkosh. 

53. Portage. 

54. Manitowoc. 

55. Sheboygan. 

56. Milwaukee. 

57. Racine. 

58. Kenosha. 

59. Chicago. 

60. Grand River. 

61. Grand Rapids. 


62. Lansing. 

63. St. Mary’s River. 

64. Sault Ste. Marie. 

65. Lake Superior. 

66. Pictured Rocks. 

67. Marquette. 

68. Ashland. 

69. Apostle Islands. 

70. Superior. 

71. Duluth. 

72. Port Arthur. 


Names printed in italics are for pupils in Wisconsin schools only. 

Saguenay River is noted for its rugged scenery; in 
some places it flows between cliffs of rock 1,500 feet 
high. It is sometimes called the river of death, and is 
1,000 feet deep near its mouth. 

The Montmorenci River pours its water into the St. 
Lawrence, a few miles below Quebec, making falls con¬ 
siderably higher than Niagara, and about 50 feet wide. 

Quebec is an interesting little city of about 50,000, 
situated at the head of ocean navigation on the St. 
Lawrence. It is one of the most strongly fortified places 
in North America. Read about Wolfe and Montcalm. 

Lakes Champlain and George are noted as summer re¬ 
sorts, and for the costly residences built near their shores 
and on their islands by millionaires of eastern cities. 

The two mouths ot the Ottawa River entering the 
St. Lawrence form the island on which is Montreal, the 
metropolis of British America, a city of considerable 
commercial importance, and one of the oldest in Can¬ 
ada. It has about a quarter of a million inhabitants. 

The Ottawa River is the most important in the 
world for the lumber business; on it is 

Ottawa, the seat of the Dominion Government, which 


THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN. 


133 


corresponds to our Federal Go vernment at Washington. 
From this point the 

Rideau Canal leads to Lake Ontario at Kingston. 
This route avoids the rapids of the St. Lawrence. An¬ 
other way of getting around the rapids is to go through 
the La Chine canal. Boats go down the rapids but 
cannot go up. 

The Thousand Islands occupy the upper part of the 
St. Lawrence and the narrow part of Lake Ontario 
where the river begins. There are many more than 
1,000 of them; they vary in size from several miles in 
length down to the size of a man’s hand, or smaller, for 
some are sunken rocks when the water is high; most of 
them are several acres in extent and are wooded. The 
river is here from four to twenty miles wide. On the 
Canadian side most of the islands present the beautiful 
scenery of nature. On the American side the million¬ 
aires have built magnificent palaces on the islands, 
which they use for summer homes. One of the finest of 
these belongs to George Pullman, the car manufacturer. 

Oswego is a little city at the mouth of the Oswego 
River; it has great starch works ; note the remarkable 
group of little lakes which flow into the Oswego River. 

Rochester , on the Genesee River, is famous for flour 
mills, and has immense water power. It is half as large 
as Milwaukee. 

Toronto , almost as large as Montreal, is the capital 
of Ontario. 

The Welland Canal enables vessels to pass around 

Niagara Falls , the most famous waterfall in the 
world; they are about 165 feet high and nearly a mile 


134 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


wide. On the crest of the fall the water is from 4 to 20 
feet deep. Every minute 15,000,000 cubic feet of water 
passes over the falls. Let the pupils find by computa¬ 
tion how many times the size of the school house or 
some other well known large object this volume of water 
would equal. For the first seven miles below the falls 
there is a descent of 110 feet, causing wonderful rapids 
hardly less grand than the falls. 


XVII. 

THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN ABOVE NIAGARA. 

Buffalo , at the west end of the Erie Canal, has one 
of the best ports on the Great Lakes. Hard coal from 
Pennsylvania is shipped from Buffalo by lake to all the 
tipper lake ports. 

Lake Erie is the smallest and shallowest of the 
Great Lakes. It has no good harbors on the north 
shore. Its average depth is only about 120 feet, while 
that of the three great lakes above it is over 900 feet. 
Although it is the furthest south of all the Great Lakes, 
it freezes over while the others remain open. [A spoon¬ 
ful of water freezes quicker than a bucketful.] Ice on 
Lake Erie is sometimes thick enough for teams to cross. 
Since Niagara River has a fall greater than the depth of 
Lake Erie it is evident that this lake will sometime be 
entirely drained or reduced to a river extending from 
Detroit to Buffalo. This will make an inland city of 

Cleveland , the largest city on the Great Lakes ex¬ 
cept Chicago. Cleveland is a great manufacturing 


THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN ABOVE NIAGARA. 


135 


center. It has one street, Euclid Avenue, which is 
probably the finest residence street in America. 

Toledo is an important trade center. Pipe lines 
convey natural gas to the city. The islands in the 
vicinity are noted for their excellent vine 3 r ards. 

Detroit , the largest city of Michigan, and one of 
the oldest in the United States, is about the size of 
Milwaukee. A car ferry transports trains across the 
river. It is not practicable to bridge the river, for the 
land on both sides is low, and the number of vessels 
passing is so great that a draw bridge would have to 
be open nearly all the time to accommodate the lake 
traffic. This river and the St. Clair constitute the most 
important stream in the world commercially, measured 
either b}^ the number of vessels or the tonnage. 

At Port Huron is a railroad tunnel about two miles 
long extending under the St. Clair River; it is one of 
the great tunnels of the world. An average of 600 
freight cars per day pass through this tunnel. 

Lake Huron is the second in size of the Great Lakes. 
Together with Georgian Bay it has about 3,000 islands. 

Saginaw Bay is the largest inlet in Michigan, and 
has several good harbors. 

In Mackinac Strait is the island of Mackinac, a 
famous summer resort. Fort Mackinac on this island, 
now abandoned, was once an important military post 
and commanded the entrance to 

Lake Michigan , the third in size of the Great Lakes, 
and the only one of them wholly in the United States. 

Green Bay and Fox River , together with the lower 
part of the Wisconsin river, were formerly thought to 


136 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


be the best water route from the Great Lakes to the 
Mississippi, and the Federal government spent many 
thousands of dollars in the vain attempt to improve 
this route and make it navigable, but the shifting sands 
in the bed of the Wisconsin and the growth of the large 
cities of St. Louis and Chicago finally led to the aban¬ 
donment of the scheme; this route is no longer used for 
navigation. 

Green Bav is an old city and was the center of a 
flourishing French settlement in early days. 

Appleton is noted for its paper mills. 

Oshkosh for manufactures of lumber and matches. 

Portage, as its name implies, is the place where the 
early voyagers carried their boats across and thus 
passed from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi basin. 

Milwaukee , called the Cream City, because built 
chiefly of cream colored brick, is a city of over a quarter 
of a million inhabitants. It is built on a semi-circular 
bay seven miles across, and has an excellent harbor 
with twenty miles of docks. Nearly half the population 
is German. It is noted chiefW for the manufacture of 
beer; it has also a large iron business and extensive 
tanneries, and is one of the leading grain ports of the 
world. 

Chicago, the second city of the United States, has a 
population of about one and a half million, and in area 
is the largest city in the world. An immense canal, 
almost complete, will soon join the waters of Lake 
Michigan with the Illinois River and drain the sewage 
of Chicago into that river. Many of the buildings in 
Chicago are from ten to twenty stories high, and in 


THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN ABOVE NIAGARA. 137 

this point it surpasses all other cities of America. Its 
.grain and live stock trade is the greatest in the world, 
and it is the greatest railroad center in the world; 
thirty-five lines of railroad enter the city, and they have 
a combined mileage which is one-third that of the 
whole United States. There are over 400 miles of 
street car track in the city. The Sheridan drive 
running north to Fort Sheridan is the finest on this con¬ 
tinent; the legislatures of Illinois and Wisconsin have 
taken steps to extend it to Milwaukee along the lake 
shore. 

The University of Chicago is one of the greatest in¬ 
stitutions of learning in the United States, and has an 
endowment of over $7,000,000. 

The towns on the east shore of Lake Michigan are 
much less important than those on the west shore; this 
is not wholly owing to the absence of good harbors. 

Grand Rapids, on Grand River, is the second city in 
Michigan, and is noted for its furniture and wooden- 
ware factories. 

Lansing is the capital of Michigan. 

Sault Ste. Marie (St. Mary’s Falls) is noted for the 
great canal and locks through which pass every year 
three times as many vessels as through the Suez Canal. 
The level of Lake Superior is 2 OV 2 feet higher than that 
-of Lakes Michigan and Huron, hence the need for locks. 

Lake Superior, as its name indicates, is higher than 
the others. It is the largest body of fresh water in the 
world. Its water is very cold, both in summer and in 
winter. It is over four hundred miles long. 


138 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The Pictured Rocks are sandstone cliffs about one- 
hundred miles west of Sault Ste. Marie, marked in 
broad bands and blotches of yellow and red in irregular 
shapes. 

Marquette and Ashland ship great quantities of iron 

ore. 

Superior and Duluth , at the head of the great lake, 
have a population of about 60,000, and are important 
shipping points for wheat from the great fields of Min¬ 
nesota and the Dakotas; all the coal used in the in¬ 
terior to the westward, is shipped to these cities by lake 
from Buffalo. 

Port Arthur is the only Canadian port of entry on 
Lake Superior. 

SOME PECULIAR FACTS ABOUT THE ST. LAWRENCE. 

Observe the great width of the St. Lawrence River. 
It has what is called an estuary mouth, and in this 
respect is in striking contrast to the Mississippi which 
has a delta mouth. Sand bars do not form at the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence; the “Banks” east of New¬ 
foundland are not formed from the silt of this river as 
might be supposed, but are probably in large measure 
the result of the deposits from the Arctic current and 
the Gulf Stream. 

One reason wh}^ there is so little silt in the St. 
Lawrence will be easily understood by a glance at a 
map of its basin, which includes the Great Lakes. The 
bottoms of these lakes form great catch-basins in which 
settles the silt brought down by the rivers that flow 
directly into them, the current in the lakes themselves 
being imperceptible except near the outlets. Hence only 


THE ST. LAWRENCE BASIN ABOVE NIAGARA. 


139 


from Kingston to the mouth does the river receive silt 
from its basin ; and in this part of its course the stream 
is very rapid, having a bed in hard, smooth rock. 

This basin is in some respects the most wonderful 
and interesting of all the river basins in the world, and 
probably contains about half the fresh water of the 
world. The St. Lawrence is the only river in which 
there are no floods. 

The water surface of this basin is almost as large 
as the land surface. In some places, notably along the 
south shores of Lakes Erie and Superior and the west 
shore of Lake Michigan the watershed is very close to 
the lakes, in some places within from six to fift}" miles 
of the shore. Bear in mind that most of the snow 
which falls in these lakes is melted at once. On account 
of the facts above noted, the variation in the hight of 
the St. Lawrence river produced by rain or melting 
snow is only about afoot; sometimes its flow is affected 
more than this by wind and ice. 

Draw a line around the St. Lawrence basin and see 
how it compares in shape and size with the Mississippi 
basin. Which has the greater depth of rainfall ? Which 
the greater total aggregate of rainfall ? If an inch of 
rain should fall on Lake Michigan and the same amount 
on an equal area of Illinois, in which case would the 
greater amount of water be discharged into the ocean ? 
It is estimated that the St. Lawrence discharges more 
water than the Mississippi. 



140 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 

GENERAL LESSONS. 

I. 

STRUCTURE AND SIZE OF CONTINENTS. 

We have now completed the journey around North 
America, and by following the coast, and ascending the 
rivers and their tributaries, have reached all the towns 
of importance with one exception. In making the cir¬ 
cuit of Europe we found one region, the Caspian basin, 
inaccessible by water routes from the ocean. In North 
America the interior basin is west of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains, and contains one city, Salt Lake City, population 
about 50,000, and noted chiefly because it was founded 
and for a long time controlled by the Mormons. It 
is in a rainless region, consequently farm land must be 
irrigated. 

There are several good reasons why more time should be spent in 
school on the geography of Europe and North America than upon 
any or all of the other continents. First. Europe and North America 
embrace the great bulk of that part of the human race whose life and 
occupations and the impress which they have made and are making 
on the world constitute what is called modern civilization. Second. 
Comparatively little is known about the other continents, especially 
of the interior regions. Third. Europe and North America are so 
closely related commercially and historically that an intelligent in¬ 
habitant of one of these continents must know a good deal about 
the other. 

In the lessons thus far, Europe and North America have been 
treated according to the Tracing and Sketching method. An effort 
has been made to reduce the number of facts to be taught to a reason¬ 
able minimum, and to present those facts in an orderly, systematic 
manner, with certain helps and suggestions by which to add interest 
to the work without losing sight of the fact that a certain body of 
definite knowledge, of partioular facts, must be mastered. In study¬ 
ing the four remaining land masses, not so much minuteness of detail 
is necessary; the aim will be to summarize a few leading facts con¬ 
cerning these continents. 

What is presented is not intended as a substitute for what is 
found in text-books, but rather as supplementary to the book or as 
a suggestion to the'teacher who is at a loss to know which of the 
many things presented in the text-book should be chiefly emphasized. 


STRUCTURE AND SIZE OF CONTINENTS. 


141 


HOW MANY CONTINENTS ARE THERE ? 

The usual answers to this question are two, three, 
five, six; and all these answers are correct. It is inter¬ 
esting to note what the various notions of a continent 
are, which lead to such a variety of answers. 

“A continent is a very large land mass.” This 
definition, with considerable emphasis on the word 
large , gives us two continents, the Eastern and the 
Western, and leaves Australia to be classed with the 
islands. But, remembering that large is only a relative 
term, we may use the same definition so as to include 
Australia, and thus have three continents. 

“A continent is a large basin-like land mass, having 
mountains near the outer edges.” This definition makes 
a continent differ from an island, not only in size, but 
also in structure; it recognizes as distinct structural 
units the two Americas and Africa, although each is 
attached to another land mass by a slender neck. Under 
this definition we get five continents, Eurasia, Africa, 
North America, South America, Australia. 

Although the separatiou of Europe as a land mass 
from Asia is not very clearly marked, yet some eminent 
geographers, among them Guyot, prefer to regard them 
as two, because of the striking differences in their struc¬ 
ture. Probably the fact that a difference of name leads 
the mind to assume a difference in the things named, 
also the historic antagonism between the people of 
Europe and Asia may have biased the geographers. 
Yet those who enumerate six continents are in respect¬ 
able company. 

Here is an interesting point worth noting: Each 


142 


TRACING AND SKETCH ING LESSONS. 


continent has an interior basin, that is, a region which 
is not drained into the ocean. In going around North 
America by the Tracing and Sketching method, ascend¬ 
ing all the rivers, there was one considerable area which 
we did not reach—the great Salt Lake Basin. We shall 
find a similar area of greater or less extent in each con¬ 
tinent. 

Here is a convenient wav to remember the continents in the order 
of their size. Make three dots, one for each of the northern con¬ 
tinents—North America, Europe and Asia, and three for the southern 
continents—South America, Africa and Australia. Connect the dots 
by lines making a symmetrical figure, thus: 



Begin at either right-hand point and follow the line. 


II. 

SOUTH AMERICA. 

This may be called “The Continent ol Threes.” 

1. It is three-cornered. Name and locate the corners. 

2. It is bounded by three bodies of water. Name them. 

3. There are three mountain systems. What and where are they? 

4. Three great rivers. Name them and state in what direction 
they flow. 

5. Three great plains, Llanos, Selvas and Pampas. 

The most striking feature of the structure of South 
America is the one-sided arrangement of its mountains. 
The continuous, unbroken wall of the Andes arrests 
attention at once on looking at the map; situated as 
it is on the extreme western edge, this mountain wall 
profoundly affects the climate and rainfall. Note the 



SOUTH AMERICA. 


143 


deserts of Atacama. Take any school text on physical 
geography, and study the winds of this region until 
you can clearly account for the great rainfall east of 
the Andes, and for the desert in northern Chili. 



The characteristics of the three great plains are 
worthy of note. The Llanos (Orinoco basin) are the 
levelest part of the world, being almost as level for 
hundreds of miles as the surface of still water. In the 
dry season this plain is a desert. When the rains come, 


144 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


vegetation grows rapidly; alligators and turtles, which 
had burrowed beneath the ground during the summer, 
now crawl out; wild cattle return from the adjoining 
hilly country, whither they had emigrated when the 
streams and the grass dried up, and they now find 
abundant pasturage on these great plains. 

The Selvas (Amazon basin) are more densely 
wooded than any other part of the earth of equal ex¬ 
tent, and abound in birds of brilliant plumage and in 
reptiles. The large trees are interlaced with vines, and 
the underbrush is so dense as to make the forests almost 
impenetrable. 

The Pampas (La Plata basin) somewhat resemble 
the prairies of North America, and are regarded by 
some explorers as the most fertile part of the world;, 
although the}' have not yet been utilized for farming so 
much as for grazing, yet Argentina is now one of the 
great wheat producing countries, and exports about 
half as much wheat as the United States. 

Although the Brazilian Andes and the Highlands of 
Guiana are small in comparison to the Andes, yet they 
rank about equally important with the Alleghanies of 
North America. 

Lake Titicaca is noted for its great elevation. Its 
surface is nearly twice as high as the highest peak of 
the Alleghanies. It is about one-half larger than Great 
Salt Lake, and its depth is unknown. The water of 
this lake is fresh or only slightly brackish, although it 
has no visible outlet to the ocean. The interior basin 
in which Lake Titicaca is situated is much smaller and 
higher than the corresponding region in North America. 


SOUTH AMERICA. 


145 


In South America there are ten republics and three 
colonies; two of the republics have no seacoast. 

Of South American cities, two are larger than St. 
Louis, four are larger than Milwaukee, and ten are 
larger than Denver. Venezuela would make ten states, 
and Argentina twenty as large as Wisconsin or Iowa. 

Find a South American island whose shores are not 
washed by- salt water, and which is about as large as 
Massachusetts. 


TEN LARGEST CITIES OF SOUTH AMERICA. 


1 . 

2 . 

3. 

4. 

5. 

6 . 
7 
8 . 
9. 

10 . 


Buenos Avres, \ T ,, ,,, T 

Rio Janeiro, f Lar « er than bt ' Lou,s - 

Rahilf^ 0 ' } Larger than Milwaukee. 
Montevideo, 

Pernambuco, 

Valparaiso, 

Rosario, 

Bogota, 

Lima. 


Larger than Denver. 


It is not worth while to burden the memory with 
numbers expressing population of cities. We do not 
know much about the size of distant cities, and have no 
reliable sources of information within convenient reach. 
In this we are no worse off than the authors who write 
our text-books. To illustrate: The population of some 
South American cities as given in two recently pub¬ 
lished geographies is as follows: 

The Werner Frye’s 

Geography. Geography. 


Buenos Ayres*. 612,226 58U,000 

Rio Janeiro. 522,651 800,000 

Lima. 103,956 162,000 


*The Natural Elementary Geography gives the population of Buenos Ayres ns 
664,000. The dates of publication of these books are Frye’s, 1895, The Werner. 1896, 
The Natural, 1897. Assuming that they are all correct, Buenos Ayres is growing 
very fast. 






146 


TRACING AND SKETCHING KESSONS. 


III. 

ASIA. 

Asia contains about half the inhabitants and a third 
of the land surface of the world. It is difficult to repre¬ 
sent on a flat surface so large an area so as to convey 
correct ideas of direction. On a flat map of Asia there 
is special need to notice the lines of latitude and longi¬ 
tude in determining directions, for it is not strictly true 
that “up is north, down is south, to the right is east 
and to the left is west.” 

The Obi , the Yenisei and the Lena drain the great 
Siberian plain. Since their mouths are far to the north 
of their sources there are great swamps in their lower 
courses. The sources are affected by the approach of 
spring while the mouths are still choked up with ice; 
this causes the water in the lower courses of these rivers 
to spread out over the plains. 

Lake Baikal is one of the deepest lakes in the world, 
being over 4,000 feet deep in some parts. It is the 
largest lake in Asia and is longer than Lake Superior. 
It has two commercial ports and considerable trade is 
conducted over it by steamboats. A car ferry is soon 
to be established across it. 

Notice the fringe of large islands bordering the whole 
* southeastern shore of Asia; also that they are arranged 
in chains and groups curving outward from the main¬ 
land, thus forming large seas between this fringe and 
the continent. These islands mark a line of great vol¬ 
canic action, but there are no active volcanoes in the in¬ 
terior of Asia. 


1. Obi River. 

2. Yenisei River. 

3. Lake Baikal. 

4. Lena River. 

5. Kamchatka. 

6. Sea of Okotsk. 

7. Amoor River. 

8. Vladivostok. 

9. Japan Sea. 

10. Tokio. 

11. Corea. 

12. Yellow Sea. 

13. Pekin. 

14. Hoang Ho River. 

15. Yangtse River. 

16. Shanghai. 

17. Formosa. 

18. Hongkong. 

19. Canton. 

20. Hainan. 


21. Gulf of Siam. 

22. Singapore. 

23. Strait of Malacca. 

24. Bay of Bengal. 

25. Brahmaputra River. 

26. Himalaya Mountains 

27. Kuenlun Mountains. 

28. Calcutta. 

29. Ganges River. 

30. Ceylofl. 

31. Bombay. 

32. Indus River. 

33. Persian Gulf. 

34. Tigris River. 

35. Euphrates River. 

36. Aden. 

37. Red Sea. 

38. Asia Minor. 

39. Aral Sea. 

40. Siberian Rail wav. 



148 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


The Amoor forms part of the boundary between 
Siberia and China. 

Vladivostok is the eastern terminus of the longest 
railroad in the world, reaching from St. Petersburg to 
this point, a distance of 6,666 miles. The Russian gov¬ 
ernment is constructing this road. About 7,000 labor¬ 
ers are kept employed, and they are pushing the work 
from both ends. Rich deposits of hard coal have been 
found along the line of this road. The route marked on 
the map from Moscow to Vladivostok indicates the line 
as first projected, but instead of going around Lake 
Baikal the trains will be taken across the lake by ferry. 

Tokio is about as large as Philadelphia and is more 
like a European cit} r than are the other cities of the far 
East. 

Pekin is supposed to be as large as Chicago, but the 
population of Chinese cities as set down in text-books 
is merely an estimate. 

The Hoang Ho, sometimes called “China’s Sorrow,” 
is noted for its frequent and great floods. One in 1887 
is said to have destroyed millions of lives. 

The Yang-tse-Kiang is the most important river of 
China. It rivals the Mississippi in length, and consid¬ 
ering the absence of railways in China, is probably of 
more commercial importance than the Mississippi now 
is. Because it connects so many important provinces 
and cities it is called “the girdle of China.” 

Canton is the principal city of southern China. 
Many of its people live in house boats on the river. 

Hong-Kong belongs to Great Britain and is the 
chief commercial port of eastern Asia. 


ASIA. 


149 


IV. 

ASIA— Continued. 

Singapore, “ Lion-town,” is near the equator; it be¬ 
longs to Great Britain, and like most British ports has 
great commercial importance. Although it is a city of 
nearly a quarter of a million people, with good streets, 
lighted with gas, efficient police and other accessories 
of a modern city, yet on the average about one per¬ 
son a day is carried off from Singapore by tigers. 

The Brahmaputra has a peculiar course. Running 
almost due east for nearly 900 miles parallel with the 
Himalaya Mountains, it finds a pass through this barrier 
and reverses its course, running west for about 500 miles. 
This river and the Ganges have a common mouth. 

Not far from this great bend of the Brahmaputra 
is the greatest annual rainfall in the world, about forty- 
four feet—Seven teen times as much as in Wisconsin—and 
about forty-two feet of it falls from April to September; 
seven feet a month, twenty-one inches a week, about 
three inches a day for half the year. 

Lassa , in Tibet, is the sacred city of the Buddhists. 
It is supposed to have about 80,000 inhabitants. Euro¬ 
peans are not allowed to enter Tibet, but some explor¬ 
ers have gone there in disguise. During the nineteenth 
century only three Europeans, Manning, Hue, and Gabet 
have visited Lassa. This city is in the same latitude 
with New Orleans and with Cairo, Egypt, but has a 
climate like that of St. Petersburg. 

The Himalaya Mountains , the highest in the world, 
rise abruptly from the low plain of the Ganges in an 


150 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


almost unbroken wall, even the passes in which are 
from three to four miles high. Many of the peaks are 
25,000 feet high; Mt. Everest, the highest, is 29,002 
feet. It is impossible for men to live at an altitude much 
above 20,000 feet, hence these mountains are practically 
an impassible barrier. On the north the descent is not 
sudden, but a high plateau on which rest other great 
mountain chains stretches across all central Asia. 

Calcutta , on the Hoogly, one of the mouths of the 
Ganges, is half as large as Chicago, and is the chief 
city of British India. 

The Ganges , the sacred river of India, is the most 
frequented water way in the world. It is to India what 
the Mississippi was to America before the railroad era. 
Benares and Delhi are important cities in the basin of 
the Ganges. At Agra on the Jumna, is a mausoleum, 
the Taj Mahal, said to be the finest piece of architecture 
in the world. It required 20,000 workmen twentv-two 
years to build it. 

Ceylon has a temperate climate although so near 
the equator. It has a great variety of population, from 
intelligent Europeans down to the lowest type of men 
to be found anywhere—human beings called Yeddahs, 
who hide in the jungle, sleep in trees or caves, have but 
very feeble power of speech, and appear to be destitute 
of the instinct of worship or any idea of God. There is 
evidence that this island once contained half as many 
people as are now in the United States. Cejdon has 
recently become a rival of China in the production of tea. 

Bombay is as big as St. Louis. From 1862 to 1865 
it was the greatest cotton market in the world. Why ? 


ASIA. 


151 


The Persian Gulf is as large as the combined surface 
of the Great Lakes of North America. Into the head of 
it flow by a common mouth 

The Tigris and The Euphrates, between which was 
the ancient land of Mesopotamia. 

Aden, at the entrance to the Red Sea, is a strong 
military station owned by Great Britain ; it is a station 
on the cable which connects England with Australia. 

The Red Sea is commercially important in connec¬ 
tion with the Suez Canal as part of the water route 
from western Europe to India and China. The article 
in the cyclopedia on 

The Suez Canal will furnish valuable material for a 
lesson. 

East of the Mediterranean lies Palestine, or the 
“Holy Land” of the Jews and Christians, now a part 
of Turkey. To the geographer, the most interesting 
feature of this region is 

The Dead Sea, the surface of which is lower than 
that of any other body of water, about 1,300 feet be¬ 
low sea level. 

Northeast of Palestine is Damascus, the oldest city 
in the world, population about 150,000, famous for the 
manufacture of swords. What is a damask rose ? 

Asia Minor, the prominent western projection of 
Asia, is thickly fringed with islands, and is more like 
Europe than any other part of Asia. It is a fruitful 
region which has been almost ruined by the harsh mili¬ 
tary rule of the Turks. 

The Caucasus Mountains are the boundary between 
Asia and Europe. South of these mountains on the 


152 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


Caspian, near Baku are the largest petroleum wells in 
the world, and this region is second only to western 
Pennsylvania in the aggregate output of the petroleum 
wells. The steamers on the Caspian use petroleum in¬ 
stead of coal. 

V. 

AFRICA. 

On the map of Africa note the following facts: 

(1) In shape it somewhat resembles what other 
grand division ? It may be compared to a great foot, 
an uncouth clubfoot—with a toe at the southern ex¬ 
tremity, the top of the thick ankle reaching from Cape 
Verde to the Strait of Gibraltar, and the heel at Cape 
Guardafui. 

(2) Fully two-thirds of it lies north of the equator. 
It is the only continent* which reaches across the torrid 
zone, and more than three-fourths of it lies in that zone. 

(3) The unbroken coast line is a striking feature of 
Africa. The coast line is shorter in proportion to the 
area than in any other continent. The exploration, set¬ 
tlement and civilization of a continent are facilitated 
bv coast indentations. The lack of these is one reason 
why Africa is so little known. 

(4) Compare the size of Africa with the other con¬ 
tinents, and note that it is second in rank. We do not 
know just how large it is. How little we know about 
it is shown from the fact that the area of Africa is vari¬ 
ously estimated by geographers at from 9,500,000 to 
11,600,000 square miles, leaving a difference in their es- 

* Continent is here used in the sense which gives us six continents. 


AFRICA. 


153 


timates of an area equal to about thirty-seven states 
the size of Illinois. The reason is that the continent has 
neither been surve} r ed nor fully explored. 

(5) The mountains are around the edge. The in¬ 
terior is mostly a high plateau ; but south of the Atlas 
mountains there is a strip of low land, a chain of de¬ 
pressions about one hundred feet below the sea level. 
These depressions do not contain water. It is believed 
that were they flooded by means of a canal from the 
sea, the climate of a part of the northern edge of the 
Great Desert could thus be changed. Note the great 
size of the interior basin of this continent, and the large 
lake (Chad) and rivers which the basin contains. 

(6) The Great Desert is about as large as the United 
States. Read what any recently published geography 
says about the desert, and correct the popular misconcep¬ 
tion that it is a level plain of loose sand. All the desert 
needs is water to make it fertile; this would not be true 
of a sand plain. There are hills and mountains in the 
desert, but they are not “upholstered,” they consist of 
naked rock. 

(7) Let the pupils decide from the presence or ab¬ 
sence of rivers what parts of Africa have rain. Judging 
in this way they will probably make a mistake in regard 
to Egypt. It never rains in Egypt, yet it has the largest 
river of Africa. But the Nile flows in its lower course a 
distance of 1200 miles without receiving any tributary. 
In this it is peculiar among all the rivers of the world, 
and it is larger 1200 miles from its mouth than at its 
mouth. Why ? 

The periodic overflow of the Nile furnishes subject 



154 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


matter foi^ an interesting lesson, and most of our school 
geographies give a satisfactory presentation of it. 

(8) Near the head of the Nile observe the group of 
great lakes. Lake Victoria, h r ing directly under the 
equator, is believed by some explorers to be as large as 
Lake Superior. It may turn out when this region is fully 
explored and surveyed that our great North American 
lakes do not contain half the fresh water of the world 
as heretofore believed. 

(9) Two of the other great rivers have individual 
peculiarities worth noting. The striking thing about 
the Senegambia is that it rises near the coast, and flows 
inland, directly away from the ocean, for a distance of 
about a thousand miles, when making a great bend it 
flows into the ocean, having completed almost a semi¬ 
circle in its course. 

(10) The Congo reminds us of the Mississippi in 
one respect; its numerous tributaries spread out in a 
fan shape as we go inland. 

(11) Cairo, in Egypt, is in about the same latitude 
as New Orleans, and each is near the mouth of a large 
river. Each of these rivers has a delta mouth. What 
other points of similarity between the two rivers or the 
two cities can you see ? What differences ? 

(12) Find a point near the coast of Africa which 
has latitude zero and longitude zero. Find a small 
country whose capital suggests the name of a President 
of the United States. This city is now one of the leading 
ports of the world for the shipment of coffee; both coffee 
and cotton grow wild on this part of the coast. 

After the map is learned with reference to the dozen points noted 


AUSTRALIA. 


155 


above, a few lessons on the climate and productions, and the claims 
of different European nations in Africa will be enough work to do in 
the study of this continent. A class which spends three months on 
the map of Europe and four or five months on North America should 
not spend more than a week on Africa. 

VI. 

AUSTRALIA. 

This is the smallest of the continents, both in area 
and population, and the only one wholly south of the 
equator. It is about as large as the United States* and 
belongs to England. 

The most of Australia is a desert region, but the 
eastern and southeastern parts have a good climate and 
an enterprising population. Noticing the position of 
the mountains and bearing in mind that the trade winds 
prevail here (blowing from the southeast), it is not dif¬ 
ficult to see that this part of the continent is the only 
part that has enough rain to make it fertile. 

Australia somewhat resembles in shape the part of 
Africa north of the equator. 

Extending for 1,200 miles parallel to the northeast¬ 
ern shore is the great barrier reef about thirty miles from 
the land. This is the longest coral reef in the world. 

The lakes and rivers of Australia are unimportant, 
almost disappearing in the dry season. A central basin 
not drained into the ocean is found in the interior. The 
Murray and the Darling are the largest rivers, but in 
summer (December) they shrink to a chain of shallow 
ponds, hence they are little used for navigation. Notice 

* It maybe convenient for purposes of comparison to remember that the United 
States, (not including Alaska) Brazil, Australia and Sahara are about equal in 
eize. Europe shorn of its fringe of peninsulas may be putin the same list. The 
Chinese Empire is a third larger than the United States. 


156 


TRACING AND SKETCHING LESSONS. 


that a mistake was made in naming these rivers like 
that which we found in the naming of the Mississippi 
and Missouri. 

Australia has the largest trees in the world; but 
most of its forest area is covered with a stunted growth 
of small bushes. 

Melbourne, the largest city of Australia, is as large 
as Boston, and Sidi^ is as large as Cleveland. Only 
three cities south of the equator have a population of 
over half a million. Which cities are they ? 

Most of the people of Australia are of British de¬ 
scent, hence the government is democratic, the language 
English, and the religion Protestant. The civilization 
is in all respects like that of Western Europe and North 
America. The Australians taught the English speaking 
peoples how to vote. Their method of transferring 
land titles is also a great improvement on ours. 

Tasmania and New Zealand are neighboringislands 
which also belong to England. They have a temperate 
climate and a great variety of natural resources. New 
Zealand is almost as large as the British Islands. 

A few lessons on the principal island groups of the Pacific and one 
or two on the West Indies should be given. In map study of islands 
fix on a few units of comparative area, for example, Borneo as big as 
Texas; Cuba equal to Tennessee, Hawaian Islands as large as Con¬ 
necticut and Rhode Island. 

In the large island groups, both in the East and West Indies, ob¬ 
serve the prevalence of extended chains or rows usually curved, sug¬ 
gesting a submerged shore, the islands being the projections of the 
peaks and plateaus, the valleys being under water. Note also that 
island groups often seem to be a partially submerged projection from 
some peninsula. Illustrations: Malay Peninsula—Sumatra, Java. 
Kamchatka—Kurile Islands. Alaska—Aleutian Islands. Yucatan— 
Cuba. Hayti, Porto Rico. 

After the foregoing lessons have been mastered the class should 
have a month’s work in Mathematical or Astronomical Geography. 








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